Fallacy
by cb.spica
Summary: She's a military investigator, seeking the scattered pieces of a case closed before it was ever opened... and she is everything he hates: innocent, compassionate, determined. Human. EnvyXOC.
1. How to Catch a Serial Killer  Or Two

You have two choices:

1. Believe that everything they told you was a lie; they were killed for the sake of justice.

2. Believe that everything they told you was what they truly believed; the true reason they were killed was concealed from you.

Would you rather believe that they betrayed you or that they were killed unjustly?

_Which is the real truth?_

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 1 ~ How to Catch a Serial Killer - or Two<strong>

"It was kinda hard to find him using that blurry photo of the murder suspect that you distributed to the public," the voice on the other end of the phone said, "but I have a tip as to where Slicer's current location might be."

"Oh?" Lt. Colonel Hughes asked as he studied the picture of the almost one-year-old Elysia in front of him, wondering how trustworthy this random caller's tip could possibly be when not even the military had any information on where Slicer was. Normally, it was the job of a lower-ranked officer to take calls like this, but today was a holiday. Hughes was only at work today because Slicer was causing such terror to the public. His murders were sporadic and occurred in random places… no one felt safe.

"Would you like to make a deal with me?" the caller asked.

"…A deal?" the man asked, frowning skeptically.

"I'll give you the tip, but only if you let me come with you guys to investigate the town that I was tipped off that he might be in."

Hughes raised an eyebrow. Why did this person want to be there during the investigation? He didn't really have anything to lose though, and he needed to catch Slicer before there were any more victims.

"Deal."

* * *

><p>How fun it would be to slice them up; slice them into countless pieces.<p>

Each of them, except for perhaps the fragile- looking girl, would be a fun opponent. He loved it when his victims tried to fight back, only to still fall prey to him.

The only problem was that they'd handcuffed and… (footcuffed?) him, obviously to restrain him. He certainly never heard anyone use the term "footcuffed" before, but they'd cuffed his feet, and he was pretty sure that you couldn't handcuff feet. But if you could, that wouldn't make a whole ton of sense. Or, he could just save himself a lot of trouble by simply saying they shackled both his hands and feet.

What crazy things he thought of in his boredom.

The room he was in was mostly white, save for the gray-blue floor tiles. This town was so small that it didn't even have a jail, so the police ended up throwing him in here instead. Well, since this room also happened to be the only place they could talk privately, the police were also still around in here. The room was closed in with no windows and only a single door. It was barren with no decorations or furniture, save for a single wooden bench in the corner and a table and chair in the center. The slight buzz of electricity could be heard from the lights that occasionally flickered above them. Overall, it was a pretty dreary place.

The murder suspect known as Slicer stared into space with naught but a smirk on his face. Although he hadn't thought that he'd be caught in this town he was pretty confident that this wasn't the end. In fact, he had come to this town to meet up with his younger brother after they'd split up to find a blacksmith who'd sell them cheap, good, and easily hidden blades.

As soon as he got the chance, he'd escape.

At the moment, Lt. Colonel Hughes, and some military and police officers were arguing about what they should do with him, but he wasn't particularly interested in what they were saying. They had only managed to take him in without a fight because they had caught him off-guard and currently weapon-less since he was waiting for his brother to bring the new blades. It was too bad, really. He wanted to know how many of those dumb cops he could take on at once. How many of them would run like animals when they realized their fate, how many of them would stubbornly try to resist it, and how many would be killed as he sliced them into so many pieces that they were no longer identifiable. But surely a few of them, like that Lt. Colonel, were skilled opponents.

He wanted to let out an insane cackle at this thought. Yes, death to the defeated. But it would be them who were defeated, not him. He wasn't yet defeated.

He turned his attention to the dark-haired girl sitting on the other side of the room, swinging her legs back and forth happily on a bench while eating some cookies. She wore a simple, knee-length red dress with a white-and-black plaid ribbon on its front, loose white socks, and black shoes.

He found himself to be quite puzzled by her. From what he had heard the police say, she was the one who gave them the tip about where he was in the first place, and now she looked as if she wasn't at all afraid of a murderer. But still, she didn't seem strong enough to fight back against him. Maybe she knew alchemy or something, but at such a young age, he doubted she was proficient enough to be able to do anything against him.

Which again left him the mystery as to what this girl was up to.

Glancing briefly towards the military and police officers, the girl hopped off the bench, cookie still in hand, and walked over to him. Ironically, they were too busy discussing about what should be done with the two of them to be paying any attention to them. From what he'd heard them say, they were trying to figure out where the girl had got her information on his location and what they were going to do with him.

"Nice job finding out where I was," he said, when the girl was only a few feet in front of him. "I congratulate you."

"Why thank you," the girl said, smiling triumphantly.

"Is there something you want with me, kid?"

"Straight to the point, aren't you?" she asked, sighing and looking a bit dejected. Had she wanted to hear more compliments about herself or something? She kicked her feet at the ground a little bit, frowning, before perking up again. "Well, that's fine," she concluded. "Do you, by chance, know anything about the Philosopher's Stone?"

"Hahaha," he laughed – in the end, the girl was still a kid, no matter how good she was at getting information. He found it mildly ridiculous that he would know anything about something like the Philosopher's Stone. "That's an interesting question, kid, but I have no interest in something like that."

"Yeek," she said, looking slightly disgusted. "Don't laugh again, that's creepy."

She was more scared of his laugh than she was of him evidently. He laughed again.

"I just told you not to laugh again!" she complained vehemently, glaring at him with her amber eyes. "And well, there's no harm in asking even if there's only a remote chance that you'll know something. Besides, from what I can tell the information on the Philosopher's Stone appears to be somewhat difficult to find for the average citizen, so I figured an outlaw might know something."

If he wasn't handcuffed, the man would have scratched the back of his head. "I don't know anything," he conceded, "but you're pretty sharp for a kid."

"Hehe," she giggled, pleased that she had been complimented again. "Naturally. I would be quite offended if you thought otherwise."

_What a cheeky brat_, he thought to himself, but he actually found her to be quite amusing. "Aren't you scared of me, kid?" he asked in earnest wonder.

"Erm," she said, looking somewhat puzzled as her brow furrowed and she stared up at the ceiling thoughtfully. "Well, I kind of thought it was obvious, but I just figure that you're not of much danger to me if you're all shackled like that." She smiled happily. "There's no reason for me to be afraid of something that can't do anything to me."

_Well, that is certainly an interesting way of thinking… _the man thought. _But she makes a good point._

"Oi," Lt. Colonel Hughes suddenly broke into their conversation, frowning. "I don't want a child like you involved with a serial killer like him."

Irritation passed over the girl's face for a moment. Apparently, she didn't appreciate getting treated like the child she was. Taking another bite of her cookie, she turned to walk back to the other side of the room where she was originally sitting.

But then she turned around again to face him once more, her amber eyes examining him one last time. She walked away after that, but not before grabbing his battered old hat.

The suspect serial killer was left wondering why in the world a young teenage girl would ever want to steal his hat.

* * *

><p>Normally, you would think that Slicer's killings would stop if you caught Slicer.<p>

But they didn't.

It had hardly been half an hour since she had been scolded by Lt. Colonel Hughes for talking to Slicer when they received a call from a nearby city about a murder. It was to be expected though, especially considering Hughes' personality (she had gone through an awful lot of trouble to look up basic information on most of the important military officials to give her some standing with them when she actually met them). Hughes had just been preparing to interrogate the man, but the new murder was a more pressing problem, especially because, from what the police had reported to him when they called him, it was just like one of Slicer's killings. Claire bit her thumb nervously as she walked down the hallway to the room where the murder had occurred.

Damn. She hated it when things didn't go according to plan. On the other hand, she loved a good mystery. This really was turning out to be quite the intriguing case.

The sliding door of the room where the murder occurred was just slightly propped open. The door led to the fighting hall of the tiny dojo the murder had taken place in. She walked over to it but paused when she was right in front of it. She'd never actually seen a dead body before, let alone one that had been chopped up. In all honesty, she had to admit that she wasn't looking forward to the sight. She wasn't particularly delicate about this sort of thing or anything, but … she didn't really know – know what bugged her about this. The idea of seeing the body of a murder victim gave her a sort of twisted feeling in her stomach. This was probably her last chance to back out of this.

…

Well, she wasn't taking it.

Why?

Because curiosity was greater than common sense.

Curiosity might have killed the cat, but she wasn't a cat. Not to mention that an awful lot of people thought that curiosity was framed by stupidity, and she wasn't stupid.

And with that thought, she walked into the room as if it was her every day routine to walk into a murder scene.

By the time she walked through the doorway, Hughes was already barking some commands at his officers. Some of the officers were scrambling around, trying to follow his orders, and others were carefully examining the scene with their equipment. Someone had already covered the remains of the body, but no one had tried to hide any of the blood splatters in the room.

The splatters that dripped down the walls, the splatters that stained the polished wooden floor, the splatters that made it look like a horrific art piece.

Claire felt the color drain from her face as nausea washed over her. The whole thing was utterly repulsive.

"…This is disgusting…" she muttered quietly to herself.

Hughes, who had been kneeling as he briefly examined the remains beneath the cloth, looked up and noticed her. "Hey, I thought I told you to stay away from here," he said disapprovingly as he let go of the cloth and let it fall back into place. She could hear the protective tone in his voice, almost like a father would say to his child.

But she most certainly wasn't his child.

"How rude," she sniffed, crossed her arms across her chest sulkily and turning away from him. Just because she was a kid didn't mean she couldn't handle a little gore. Or maybe a lot of gore. Well, that was beside the point, though. The dark-haired girl returned her stubborn amber eyes to the lieutenant colonel. "If I help you catch the murderer then you have to acknowledge me as a decent informant."

"No," Hughes replied simply. His tone was adamant and his stare serious as he stood up to face her. "I don't want to put you in any more danger than you're already in."

_Argh,_ she thought in frustration, _I hate being a kid!_ Changing her approach, the thirteen-year old tried, "Oh come on, I know you want it! It's for the benefit of both of us." She looked at him with expectant puppy dog eyes.

"The help?" Hughes asked, his brow furrowing. "I'd rather keep kids out of danger. Sorry."

Claire glared at him before finally saying, "Hmph," annoyed that he wouldn't accept help. She would have to try to convince him again later. As Hughes turned back to the cloth with the remains beneath it, the girl's eyes wandered the room until she found a bloodless corner. Walking over to it, Claire sat down and pulled out a _Sherwood Helmes_ novel to read while she contemplated what her next move should be.

Well, at least this wasn't boring.

But it wasn't long before she ended up putting the book down. In fact, it wasn't more than ten as it was hard to concentrate with the family members of the dead man were sobbing in the hallway. After his body had been found in the small dojo, and Hughes had contacted his family. He had advised them not to come to the scene of the murder, but they had come anyways. She understood why they were crying, but she just wanted to shut them out.

She didn't want to think about how broken the murdered man's parents must feel right now, how broken his girlfriend must be, how broken his younger sister was. It was never easy to lose a family member, especially so suddenly, but silently, she wished they would all shut up so that she wasn't forced to feel the dead man had ever been anything other than dead.

Throwing her book back into her bag, the girl stood up, opened the sliding door, and walked out of the room, and then out of the building, to get away from the depressing atmosphere. The outside air was clear and everything seemed much lighter and less tense than it had been inside. The girl took a deep breath and exhaled, listening to the calming sounds of the chirping birds and rustling leaves. Upon noticing a nice rock in a sunny place, she leaned against it and rubbed her temples as she went back to eating another lollipop.

No, don't question the lollipop. It helped her think.

_Okay, Claire,_ she told herself, get your facts straight. _You're perfectly capable of figuring out this mystery._

The man they currently had in custody shared a resemblance with the one in the photograph (as great a resemblance as one could with such a blurry image), but he was already in custody by the time this murder occurred. It was physically impossible for him to have committed it.

So then did they have the wrong criminal? That was also a possibility, she supposed. When she had talked to him, he had neither admitted to nor denied the crime he was accused of. No one had interrogated him yet either. She really didn't have any proof that this guy was indeed the one who had committed the murders, other than the fact that he resembled a blurry photograph.

Claire reached into her backpack and pulled out the copy of the photograph that she had. If only fugitive criminals would stand and pose for the camera, jobs like this would be a lot easier. Sadly, she didn't think that would happen very soon.

In any case though, she wanted to figure out what was going on. In her head, she listed the possibilities: 1. The criminal had magic abilities that let him attack people remotely, or 2. He was the wrong guy.

…(The second seemed an awful lot more likely than the first.)

But normally, if they hauled you in under false charges, you'd do quite a bit of objecting. He just kind of sat there and laughed like a maniac.

She wouldn't file the second option as impossible (like she would the first), but perhaps she was missing something.

She thought back to the moment she'd seen him buy a ticket and get on the train to this town (mind you, she wasn't about to reveal to anyone that it was only by little more than mere chance that she had gotten the information on Slicer).

_A man she recognized walked up to the ticket stand._

_One of her rules for the past year had been to memorize every wanted man's face possible. Unfortunately for her though, she didn't have some magic ability that would allow her to instantly communicate with people to get her updated on criminal locations, so she didn't have any other choice. She was too young for adults to take her seriously unless she somehow proved herself to them, and in order to prove herself to the military, she needed to prove that she could somehow help in an investigation._

But why did she want to help in an investigation?

Again, there's that thing called curiosity. Don't forget it.

_As such, she had this tendency to walk right into danger, which was exactly what she was doing at that moment. The man she recognized had the face of the man called Slicer. There was no doubt about it. And so she proceeded to stalk him thoroughly enough to determine where his ticket was for._

_Buying a ticket to the same location he was going to, she slunk onto the train, choosing a seat that was close to where he was sitting._

"_Haha," he chortled quietly to himself, "Checking out those new blades will be fun, eh little brother?"_

Little brother?

Claire's amber eyes widened with realization.

Damn it, she miscalculated.

Just as she was about to run back into the dojo, Hughes came running out.

"Tch, we hadn't even interrogated him yet!" Hughes said angrily. "I can't believe they released him when I was gone, thinking that he couldn't possibly be Slicer. We don't know that he doesn't know anything. He looked too much like the man in the photograph – this crime could be a copycat crime."

The man was frustrated, unable to solve a case that could cause the deaths of who-knew-how-many-more people if left unsolved. He was kind; he wanted to save as many lives as possible.

And she held the key to save those lives now that she knew the answer. This was her chance to offer her deal once more.

Taking a deep breath, she stated firmly, "No, you're wrong."

Hughes stopped ranting and looked at the girl.

"I'll repeat my earlier offer," she said seriously. "If I help you catch Slicer, then you have to acknowledge me as a decent informant and let me investigate for the military."

This time, though reluctantly, he agreed.

* * *

><p>Lt. Colonel Hughes couldn't believe the incompetence of these rural policemen. He should have warned them not to release the suspect before he left, but he just assumed they wouldn't do that. Not only that, but they hadn't even taken his name down. That man clearly had an insane look in his eye when they'd caught him; not once did he look like a man convicted of a crime he didn't commit. Rather, he looked extremely confident that something would work in his favor even though he'd been caught. Claire hadn't explained exactly what she had figured out yet, but even without any explanation, it wasn't hard to see that that man still might have something to do with the case.<p>

He wasn't sure what to think of the thirteen-year old girl, and he most certainly wasn't sure where she was getting her information. If it wasn't for the threat Slicer was posing to the public, Hughes wouldn't have agreed to let her help.

_Does this girl even know what she's getting herself into?_ Hughes wondered, clutching the steering wheel of the car as they drove back to the police station.

Why did she want to get involved with the military?

Was she a spy for some other country or something?

He didn't have the right to make this girl's decisions for her, but if Elysia ever tried to do what Claire was trying to do, he would never let her do it. It was just too dangerous. Too brutal. She was too young.

Well, although the only things he'd noticed about her so far were that she was incredibly smart, appeared to be extremely good at collecting information (he seriously wanted to know how a thirteen year old had managed to get a hold of Slicer's location), and appeared to have somewhat of a sweet tooth, he would probably be doing the investigations on her anyways, providing she actually managed to succeed in helping them. As if someone who hadn't even had a background check done on her could just work as an informant for the military. That would be an extreme breach in security, to put it lightly.

She reminded Hughes of the Elric brothers who had become state alchemists just last year. He couldn't say that he knew everything about why Edward would want to become a dog of the military at such a young age, but nothing easy could bring a person to do that to themselves.

People were killed in the military. People were killed by the military.

Death wasn't just something that happened to other people that you didn't know. It was something that was always around, always waiting to creep up on you.

By now, they had arrived back at the police station. He and Claire climbed out of the car, and he noticed her reaching into her bag. She seemed to keep an awful lot of food in there, but this time she pulled out a battered old hat.

"What's that for?" he asked, slightly mystified. "Wait, isn't that the guy we had in here earlier's hat?"

"Yup," the girl said cheerfully, holding the hat up and smiling. "You guys have tracking dogs, don't you?"

Hughes blinked, realizing what Claire was implying. She was entirely one step ahead of him, even though she was probably twenty years younger. He would have to step it up a bit. "Yeah," he told her.

"Awesome." She clapped her hands together with pleasure. "Let's use them."

* * *

><p>"<em>We went wrong when we assumed Slicer was just one person. We were too narrow-minded," Claire began carefully.<em>

The big hunting dogs sniffed fervently at the ground, trying to locate the scent they had sniffed on the hat. So far, the dogs had led them from the police station to the forest on the edge of the town. The brush in there was overgrown, and it didn't look as if people normally tread through, which made it a perfect place for Slicer to be. Hughes had to admit though that he was still in shock that a kid could have thought far enough ahead to grab something with the man's scent on it.

When he asked about it, she had grinned at him and replied, "I was just taking a precaution. Wasn't it a good idea?"

Kids these days.

Hughes, Claire, and a police officer that came with them were getting deeper into the forest, and less and less light was finding its way through the thick, entangled branches of the trees. The trees reached far into the sky, each with vines crawling up its trunk and branches. A few crows perched high above them, staring down on them with beady eyes. Old rotting wood covered in moss was scattered across the ground, and they had to be careful to avoid poison ivy. Occasionally, a sudden rustle of the shrubbery would catch their attention, but it tended to be either a rabbit or a squirrel.

One of the tracking dogs suddenly looked as if something had piqued its interest as it tried to urge Hughes, Claire, and the police officer that was with them to follow it.

"I'll check out the situation first," the police officer said, holding the dog's leash. "You guys wait here for a second."

"Alright," Hughes agreed as the officer quickly disappeared behind the vegetation. Hughes hoped the officer wouldn't get himself into any trouble…

A silence descended upon Hughes and Claire, and only the sporadic caw of a crow could be heard in the distance. Claire was certainly very good at keeping her calm even though they were in a situation where Slicer could come upon them at any moment. Despite her age… No, perhaps because of her age, she would probably make a good addition to the investigation department. It wasn't likely that anyone would suspect a little girl like her was a spy for the military. Besides, she said she wanted to be acknowledged as an informant.

He still had his qualms about letting another kid into the military, but –

"Help me!" the police officer desperately called out from somewhere nearby. Hughes felt his pulse quicken with fear for the officer. A second later, an agonizing scream pierced the air, shortly followed by a cackling laughter.

Hughes and Claire rushed over to the sound of the scream, where they found two tall men standing over the bleeding body of the policeman. Hughes clenched his fists; he shouldn't have let the man go alone.

"_It wasn't a copy cat crime," Claire said, looking him in the eye. "Slicer is not one, but two people."_

"You did well finding us," the man they had caught earlier today said. What little light that shone through the trees glinted menacingly off his silver blade. "I think it is fair to assume that that little girl who was with you earlier played a great contribution to that."

Noting the man's word choice, Hughes glanced around him to see that Claire had mysteriously vanished into thin air. That was good though. At least this way, she was less likely to get attacked.

"Bro, what should I do with this guy?" another man (who looked quite similar to the man standing next to him, just a bit shorter) asked as he waved the body of the man he'd just sliced in the air. Hughes assumed he was the younger brother. He gritted his teeth angrily as he resisted the urge to attack rashly at the way they treated the officer.

"Just kill him if he's not already dead," the older brother said nonchalantly. "He's not our main priority right now."

At that comment, the other man tossed the body aside. "I'll kill him as soon as we finish with this guy then," he said, smirking in anticipation as he glanced eagerly towards his blade.

Hughes wasn't going to let them attack anyone else.

Before they could react, Hughes dashed sideways and threw several push knives in their direction. His hazel eyes quickly analyzed his opponents as well as his surroundings – this environment put him at a disadvantage because he had to avoid all the vegetation while throwing his knives, but the two men who made up Slicer were equally disadvantaged, because it was harder to locate him in the dark.

Each person that died had family, friends, who would cry for him when he was dead.

No death was easy.

Charging through the trees like a lion towards prey, the younger brother lunged at him, but Hughes quickly dodged the attack and kicked the man in the face, causing him to fall back. He had to think quick – facing two opponents was four times as hard as facing one. The man swore, wiping blood from his now-bleeding nose. _Where __is__ Colonel Mustang when you need__him?_ Hughes wondered in frustration as he prepared to attack once more. As part of the investigations department, Hughes was better trained in self-defense than offense.

A nervous feeling gripped Hughes' stomach – something was wrong. Although Hughes was winning so far and the younger brother was still slightly unsteady on his feet, a confident sneer had found its way onto the younger brother's face.

In his position, he shouldn't look so confident… Where was the older brother? His pulse quickening, Hughes took a step back.

And walked right into their trap.

"It looks as if we've been underestimated," Hughes heard a voice say from behind him.

Instinctively, he threw himself to the side, just as the older brother swung his sword downward with a slice that easily would spelled the end for the lieutenant colonel.

"Tsk, tsk," Hughes said, gritting his teeth. "I wouldn't let you guys get the better of me that easily."

Now completely recovered, the younger brother flew towards him again, wildly jabbing a blade at him. His eyes were wild as he enjoyed the excitement of the fight.

Hughes could feel his heart beating in his chest, his breathing getting heavier as he just marginally dodged each jab. One blow would be enough to disable him enough for them to easily take him down. He should have thought to call for back up before he started this fight, but there was no time to call for help now. Next time, he would definitely remember to call for back up_ before_ he got into any sort of trouble. Other than that, he was definitely going to practice his offensive skills when he finally got out of this. Self-defense was just self-defense, and while he could probably knock these guys out, he was going to have to do things pretty under-handedly. But if there was one good thing about this battle, it was that it was proving to the girl just how dangerous the work she was getting herself into was.

"Mustang!" Hughes suddenly exclaimed to a Mustang that didn't exist. "Get him from behind!"

His attacker froze for a mere second to see who Hughes was talking about, but that was all Hughes needed. In that instant, he stabbed the man in the stomach with one of his pull knives and gave him a quick karate chop to the back of the neck to make sure he was out.

Although his breathing as ragged, Hughes taunted, "And I thought I was underestimating you guys?" almost amused that his ruse had actually worked. As if Mustang would actually be all the way out here near Central- not that these two knew that.

"I suppose I miscalculated," the older brother said. He was still totally relaxed as he readied himself for the lieutenant colonel's next move. "Come."

Hughes was already running through the shrubbery by the time the invitation was given. He wanted to keep his distance from his opponent to avoid getting stabbed.

Observing Hughes' actions, the man changed his mind. "If you're not going to come," he said, "then I will."

With speed faster than what Hughes had anticipated, the older brother dashed in the direction of the sound Hughes' footsteps as the lieutenant colonel threw yet another knife towards him.

"Ahahahaha," the older brother cackled as he swung his blade towards Hughes. "Running is getting you nowhere, and it matters naught how many knives you throw if you're only going to miss." The older brother was no saner than the younger.

Both of them were predators that enjoyed the hunt.

Hughes managed to duck out of the way in time to avoid the swing, but he found himself backed against a tree. "Damn," Hughes cursed under his breath. He fumbled around his clothes searching for another knife.

And then he realized he'd already thrown all the knives he usually carried on him.

Having noticed Hughes' hesitation, the older brother shouted, "I'm not giving you time to find another knife!" preparing to stab Hughes.

Hughes, doing the first thing that came to mind, swiftly grabbed the thick, leafy branch of a nearby tree, and shoved it in the man's face. Surprised, the older brother missed Hughes and his blade embedding itself deeply into the tree behind Hughes' trunk.

Yanking the older brother's arm away from the handle of his blade, Hughes threw him to the ground.

"It's over," he said, letting his breathing slow. "You've lost."

* * *

><p>After Hughes was able to knock out the older brother, Claire let out a huge sigh of relief. Although she had assumed Hughes would win beforehand (he was, after all, a military officer who should have decent combat training), the anxiety she felt from the "what-if-something-goes-wrong-and-he-really-does-die" was still pretty strong. She had been hiding behind a bush as inconspicuously as possible.<p>

Combat really was not her strong point.

"Ah, so you were back there?" Hughes asked as he approached her. He must have detected her by hearing her let out the breath she had been holding.

"Yup," she said, looking up towards him."I thought I hid pretty well."

Hughes shrugged. "Well, kids like you should stay out of fights like that anyways."

Ignoring the fact that his comment seemed to imply she was too young to handle any of this stuff, she looked at him with sparkly eyes and asked, "So was I helpful enough? Will you let me work as a military investigator?"

"Yeah, yeah," Hughes agreed, scratching his head in a mix of resignation and bewilderment. "I never expected to have to rely on a kid to solve the Slicer case. You're in." Then he paused for a moment. "So, would you like to see a picture of my super-cute-absolutely-irresistible daughter, Elysia?"

Claire looked at him quizzically, ignorant of the endless doting that was in store for her.

And that was how she first began investigating for the military.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's note<strong>: Yay! A new story. / / shot by readers of previous story. Please do read the overly long author's note.

_Edit Dec 16, 2011: Added some extra description in little spots throughout the chapter._

**This story will be based purely off the 2003 anime.**

For those of you who don't know: Fallacy - a deceptive, misleading, or false notion, belief, etc.

Disclaimer: FMA belongs to Arakawa Hiromu.

**The romance in this story will be slow. Envy isn't the kind of character who will just *poof* fall in love. I have to deal with various other issues first before I can even start to think about that.**

Thanks to everyone who has helped me edit this chapter! I made way too many people read it. The next chapter will begin after a two year time skip.

For those of you who want to see what Claire looks like, there are links to pictures of her on my profile. I promise they won't scare you.

And I know this is just the first chapter buuuuuuuut...

**What do you think so far? I don't normally write mysteries, so was it interesting? If you remember Slicer from the anime, did you like the way I made use of him?**

Modern-style lollipops were invented somewhere around 1908. So says Wikipedia.

Hope you enjoyed reading ;D Review please xD


	2. Liore 1: Fooling the Fraud

Read the whole thing. Hopefully get a few laughs. Then judge.

To save anyone from any future confusion, Claire is _not_ a real princess. She just likes to talk about things in terms of fairy tales. So don't get the wrong idea.

Big thanks to reviewers and alerters ;D

Disclaimer: FMA belongs to Arakawa Hiromu.

* * *

><p>Two Years Later: Liore<p>

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 2 ~ Fooling the Fraud<strong>

Why? Why did everything have to be like this?

It was so painful.

Make it end.

Where was salvation?

She stumbled down the streets of the city like a wounded animal. White splotches clouded her vision; her head throbbed from the intense waves of heat. Her throat screamed for water, and her hands were caked in a mixture of sand and dirt. No one even turned to glance at her. To them, she was an invisible existence of no importance.

Everything was gone; she had nothing left.

"Miss," a man she recognized as the head priest said, his voice nothing but benevolent. He stood over her, wearing the heavy black robe of the church. She turned her eyes, dull and expressionless with the pain she had suffered, towards him. "Are you alright?"

"M-my parents…" her voice cracked, betraying her suppressed grief. "They died of illness a few days ago… I don't know what to do anymore. Our house was taken by the government because of our debts. My family is dead, and I have no home to return to."

"Would you like to seek the help of Leto?" the head priest asked.

"Leto?" she asked. Who was that?

"Child," the head priest said, bending down and placing his hand on her head. "Leto is the ever-benevolent sun god. He loves all who have faith in him."

Remembering her parents' deaths brought a wave of emotions that she didn't want to feel, but she couldn't control herself. Tears began to roll down her cheeks. "Would Leto even accept someone like me? I'm not even from Liore…"

"Yes," he said kindly. "The souls of the living are indestructible, and the souls of the dead can be resurrected. Leto can help you meet your parents again."

"How?" she asked, desperate. Meeting her parents again would be a dream come true.

"Would you like to stay at the church and show your unconditional faith in him?"

"Y-yes!" she exclaimed, wiping away her tears. Maybe there was hope after all.

"Feel free to come to the church when you're ready. Leto will be there for you whenever you seek guidance," the head priest said, standing up. He smiled at her warmly. "Pray and all your wishes will come true. May all children be blessed today and tomorrow with the grace of light. I must be on my way now. I hope to see you again." And then he turned and walked away.

Claire waited until he was out of sight.

…And then an evil grin spread itself from ear to ear. Whoops. She lied. It really did help to get in character beforehand.

_But oh my god_, she thought, _my acting skills have improved so much!_ She hadn't been so good at acting two years ago, but now that she was fifteen, she was getting quite good. She should do this more often… How she loved crocodile tears. Making up a quick sob story and crying worked wonders, especially on guys. Cornello-sama had acted just to her expectations. She'd have to reward herself later.

…And then she just couldn't stand it anymore.

Hell… IT WAS HOT.

Stupid Mustang. How dare he send her into this scorching-blazing-fiery-inferno of a desert to investigate these rumors of miracles. She worked for the Investigations Branch in Central, not the East. Lieutenant Colonel Hughes had sent her over to help Colonel Mustang as a favor. For that matter, it was a _miracle _that she was even still alive in this heat! Princesses were supposed to be treated with great care. He failed as a Prince Charming. He wouldn't defeat her that easily though!

Claire took out a giant water bottle and started chugging it down.

Entering the church for further investigations: Mission Success.

* * *

><p>Head Priest Cornello stood in front of the crowd and, as usual, smiling. Claire wasn't quite sure about the honesty behind his smile yet, but she had difficulty believing that anyone could be as saintly as he appeared to be. It didn't make a whole lot of sense to her, but who knew? Maybe there really were people like that. She would at least try to keep an open mind.<p>

That didn't make his "miracles" any less suspicious though.

Claire glanced towards a girl, slightly older than her, who had introduced herself as Roze, for a moment, noticing that the girl was watching Cornello-sama with nothing but reverence in her eyes. She sighed, hoping that perhaps Cornello-sama really was creating miracles. It really wasn't hard to tell that Roze wholeheartedly believed in Cornello-sama.

A few hours ago when she had gone to the church to take the Head Priest up on his invitation, Claire had run into Roze. It didn't take long for Claire to come to the conclusion that she was kind, polite, and devoutly religious. She was, for the most part, a pretty normal girl, save for her hair, which Claire spent quite a bit of time analyzing. It really was quite the mystery. No one in the town except for Roze seemed to have dyed hair in any way shape or form, so it would be odd if Roze did. Which then left Claire wondering how that hair could possibly be natural. After a bit of pondering (or maybe a lot of pondering) Claire finally came to the conclusion that the reason for the two different colors in her hair was a very strange case of codominant alleles, and the pink color was the result of some genetic mutation. What a truly rare case.

The church itself was quite a bit fancier than the rest of the buildings in Liore. She should have expected that though with the countless statues of Leto around town. The other buildings in the town were somewhat shabby, but the church was beautifully kept, had statues of Leto much larger than any of those scattered through town, and was painted a golden color, probably in reference to golden rays of sunlight. Even with all the sand outside, there wasn't a speck inside. It wasn't hard for Claire to conclude that the people of Liore held their religion in extremely high regard.

Upon explaining that the Head Priest told her that Claire would be coming, Roze was happily showing Claire to a room when they ran into a man called Yven. He was one of those incredibly normal-looking guys that caught your attention simply because they were so normal. He wore what looked like typical Liorian garb, had tanned skin and dark hair, and a bland disposition that made him look slightly forgetful and ditzy.

"So you're the new one here?" he asked, smiling as he reached his hand out. "Nice to meet you. May Leto bring you salvation."

"Ah, yes," Claire agreed, shaking his hand. "May Leto bring you salvation as well."

And then Yven walked away. Although their meeting was short, Claire couldn't help but wonder if there was something more to him than just all that normality. He seemed utterly benign, but it kind of bugged her that there was nothing memorable about him at all. Perhaps he didn't want to be remembered..? Claire knew that if she wasn't trying to take note of all the surroundings and people she met, she would barely have noticed him.

Shortly after that, they reached the room that Claire would be staying in, and to her pleasant surprise, the room was quite hospitable (although it was a bit odd that her window was overlooking a graveyard). The bed was of quality wood, complete with a real mattress, and the curtains of fine material that effectively blocked out the intense sunlight. The room smelled just lightly of sand, although that was only to be expected in this desert. A telephone lay on a small night table in the corner of the room, but Claire didn't think she'd get to use it. As she'd walked through the church with Roze, she'd noted that none of the walls in the church were particularly thick, so if she wanted to contact Colonel Mustang on any information, she would have to find a safer place. Well, it wasn't as if she'd be careless even if the walls were soundproof though.

"The Head Priest has done so much for us," Roze said as she stared out the window. "He was able to bring us hope."

"I've never met anyone quite like him before," Claire said smoothly, choosing her words carefully. She knew she had to keep up the façade of a person who had deep faith in him. "He truly is the emissary of the Sun God… he is able to bring light to us who have nothing but despair."

"Yes," Roze agreed, turning around and smiling. "Leto brings peace to all of us."

"Leto has granted the Head Priest the gift of miracles, hasn't he?" Claire asked, changing the subject. She could worry about finding more out about Leto later; right now she was supposed to find out about these miracles.

"Ah, yes," Roze said. "Would you like to see one?"

"Would it be alright?"

"Of course!" Roze beamed, obviously overjoyed that another person had converted to Letoism. "The Head Priest is actually going to perform some miracles for us today. If we go now, we should make it in time."

As such, Claire now found herself standing among a crowd of cheering Liorians, waiting for the Head Priest to create a miracle. From what Roze had told her on the way, his miracles were Leto's power itself, as Cornello-sama was the son of Leto. Naturally, there was also some long complicated story about how the son of Leto came to be born into the human realm. Roze had told her about it while they walked to Cornello-sama's performance, but Claire couldn't remember all the little details of it off the top of her head. She would have to read the Holy Book of Leto later.

"Your Holiness!" the crowd cheered. "Give us a miracle!"

The Head Priest waved jovially towards the crowd as a pair of children ran up to him and handed him a wilting wreath of flowers. Holding the wreath in his hands, red electric bolts seemed to surround it for a moment.

Red electric bolts. Alchemy.

But there was no transmutation circle.

And now the wreath of flowers was no longer just a wreath; rather, the flowers on the wreath had not only become healthy once more, they had also multiplied and were raining upon the bedazzled crowd.

Law of Conservation of Mass: Violated.

And therefore, Law of Equivalent Exchange: Violated.

It was alchemy, and yet at the same time, not alchemy. As Cornello-sama instantly fixed (and improved) a man's tools, Claire scrutinized the red electricity. She had to reach into her bag and grab her glasses, but she could see that the red electricity was coming from a small red stone on the ring on his finger.

Could that stone possibly be the Philosopher's Stone?

Well, this would certainly be a juicy piece of information for good ol' Mustang, but she would wait to see a few more of these "miracles" before she decided to report to him. She wanted to dig up some more information about Letoism and watch a few miracles first in order to confirm her suspicions.

Suddenly, things were beginning to look a lot more fun.

* * *

><p>A few days later, Claire had already witnessed what she deemed her "fair share of miracles," and she was pretty sure she had decent proof that that stone was the Philosopher's Stone. If she said something with no founding, Mustang would just laugh at her and treat her like a dumb kid. And she wasn't about to let him do that. Hughes was so much cooler than Mustang… at least his pictures of Elysia were cute.<p>

When she wasn't watching Cornello-sama's miracles, Claire hung out with Roze and read the Holy Book of Leto. A proper actress knew how to stay in character, and right now, she was a devoutly religious girl. Therefore, she spent an awful lot of time sitting in the church pews reading the entire Holy Book. Yes, the whole thing, from front to back. The better she knew her role, the better she could play it.

Liore was just as hot and arid as ever, and even though Cornello-sama's miracles were fake, Claire had no problem with the fact that they generated a nice supply of cold water. Water was a great thing.

(The people of Liore all seemed to be pretty used to these desert conditions though, so she was the only one craving water 24/7).

Just then, someone knocked on the door to Claire's room.

"Come in," she said, already knowing who it was. The walls were thin enough that she could hear the person's footsteps as they had walked down the hallway, and the only one with such light footsteps was Roze. All the other church guys were pretty heavy-set and with loud footsteps.

"Ah, Claire," said Roze, "how are you today?"

"I'm good!" Claire answered happily. Maybe her throat was always parched, but at least she was getting tanned instead of sunburned. "How 'bout you?"

"I'm doing quite well, thanks," she replied. "Would you like to come down with me to hear Cornello-sama's preaching today? His words are always soothing."

"Of course!" Claire said. She had some questions she wanted to ask him anyways. "When should we go down?"

"Well," Roze began thoughtfully, "he won't start preaching for a little while, so you have some time to get ready."

"No, no," Claire said. "I'm perfectly ready already! How 'bout we go now?"

"Oh, really?" Roze asked. She seemed delighted that Claire was so eager to talk to Cornello-sama. The real reason, of course, that Claire wanted to talk to Cornello-sama was that she wanted him to see just how faithful she was. "The Church is so lucky to have someone as devoted as you around."

"Why thank you," Claire smiled gratefully, grabbing her backpack as she got ready to leave the room. She didn't want to leave it unattended under any circumstances; if someone found it, it was easy to suspect that she wasn't who she said she was.

"Shall we go then?" Roze asked.

"Yup!"

And off they went to go see Cornello-sama, who, quite conveniently, was preparing for his preaching a bit early. Some of his close followers were mulling about, helping to clean all pews and set out the Holy Books. Out of the corner of her eye, she thought she saw Yven glance towards her for a moment, but she must have been mistaken because the next second he had returned to his church cleaning. The Head Priest smiled at them as they came down the stairs to the main floor of the church.

"And what brings you two here to see me so early?" he inquired, as Claire immediately bounded up to him. Roze followed shortly behind her.

"Ah, good morning," Roze said, bowing her head slightly. Claire made sure to follow Roze's gesture.

"Be it morning or midday or evening or night," Claire began, "my faith to Leto is always unyielding, so it doesn't matter what time I come."

"Leto will surely grant the wishes of girls as pure-hearted as the two of you," Cornello-sama said.

"Really?" Claire asked, not at all modest. "I'm flattered that you think of me so."

"I'm honored, Cornello-sama. I'm not deserving of your praise," Roze said modestly.

Claire suddenly realized that she had been totally undermined by Roze and should have given a response equivalent to hers. Too late now though, and it didn't really matter anyways. But the more faithful the Head Priest thought she was, the closer to him she'd be able to get, and the more he'd trust her. "Since I have been enlightened by you and taught the teachings of Leto, I've been given an entirely new perspective on life," Claire said.

"Of course," Roze agreed. "Believing in Leto has allowed me to live with hope and gratitude every day! It's wonderful."

"Leto blesses those who have unconditional faith in him," Cornello-sama said.

"Oh yes," Claire said, "I have read the Holy Book of Leto from front to back, and what salvation it has already brought me! But can you further my teachings? I would love to hear more of the benevolent sun god."

"Hmm…" Cornello-sama said. "What is it that you'd like to know?"

"Can you tell me about the fifteenth paragraph of the third section of the eighth chapter of the Holy Book?"

* * *

><p>Unsure of what else to do, Cornello-sama gave the girl his usual benevolent smile, but in reality, he was actually thinking something along the lines of, "What the hell is wrong with this girl and why does she expect me to know what paragraph she's talking about?" But he did have to come up with some sort of answer to her question.<p>

"My mind is failing me," Cornello-sama said, maintaining his outer calm, but he was wondering if the girl really did remember the contents of the fifteenth paragraph of the third section of the eighth chapter of the Holy Book or whatever she'd said. "Could you remind me of the contents of that paragraph?"

"That was the paragraph about how Leto saved all the humans from the darkness brought upon them by the evil Luna," Claire said, sighing dramatically. "I was simply dumbfounded by Leto's courage and love for life."

"Ah, that part," Cornello-sama said. Already, he couldn't wait to get rid of this girl. "Now I remember."

"That was the first time when Leto brought salvation to the world," Roze added dreamily.

Cornello-sama smirked inwardly at the diligence of his believers. Anyone who knew the whole BS story of Leto as well as they did would make great pawns, and all these two ever did was babble naively about a god that didn't even exist. "What is it that you want to hear about that paragraph?" he asked genially, despite his malicious thoughts.

"Well," Claire said, "the light that the people saw when Leto fought Luna… is that the same red light that you are using to create miracles?"

"Yes, actually," Cornello-sama agreed. Claire was more insightful than he had originally given her credit for, and with this insight, she was actually helping him deepen his follower's faith. Splendid. "Leto bestowed the flaming red light upon me so that I would be able to save the human race from destruction once more."

"Wow," Roze said, amazed. "I can't believe I never realized that."

"Leto and Luna used to be lovers, right?" Claire asked. "How do you think he felt as he fought her?"

"He was distraught," Cornello-sama answered, making up stuff as he went. Even if her questions were somewhat helping him further Roze's devotion, he wanted her to just shut up. He didn't give a damn about any of this stuff, and he barely remembered any of it anyways. It was all just one big load of bullshit after all. Luckily, people were fools and were willing to swallow all of it, but he couldn't care less about all these minuscule details. "Luna was his one true love, but she didn't share the same affection for humanity as he. He had to choose between her and humanity."

"Oh my," Claire said dreamily. "How romantic."

"How sad too, though," Roze said.

"Yes, it was a truly terrible tragedy," Cornello-sama agreed solemnly, as if all tragedies weren't terrible. Hopefully that was all the questions that this stupid girl would ask.

"Why do you think Luna grew as corrupted as she did?" Claire asked. How many questions was this idiotic pawn going to ask? She should just follow with no question. Cornello-sama had to restrain himself from grinding his teeth.

Claire, meanwhile, maintained a very bubbly atmosphere.

"She was jealous of humanity," Cornello-sama answered. It was getting harder and harder to smile through his teeth, not that he was showing any when he smiled. "Leto loved humanity just as much as he loved her, and she didn't want to share his love."

"Why did Leto love humanity so much?"

"He thought of humans as his sons and daughters," Cornello-sama replied, not truly answering the question. For a mere second, he had allowed a spark of annoyance to cross his face, but he quickly covered it up. Smiling once more at the two girls, he said, "I'm sorry I cannot spend any further time with you, but the time at which I am supposed to preach draws near. If you wish for more answers, please come seek me out at a later time. I would be glad to help you find the path to salvation."

"Thank you for your time, sir," Roze said.

The whole glad-to-help-you part was, of course, a lie because he didn't want to answer any more of Claire's incessant questions, but saying that would do him no good.

* * *

><p><em>Acting is so fun<em>, Claire thought to herself, quite pleased with her performance.

Well, surely the Head Priest wasn't going to appreciate her presence anymore, but he most certainly believed that she was a most devout follower. That suited Claire just fine. Perhaps it was even better that way – if he didn't want to see her, then he would continually say he was busy when she wanted to talk to him. And if he continually rejected her visits, then it would make sense if she spent some time loitering around his office when no one else was around because she could just say she wished to speak with him but he was always busy. And if she could loiter around his office freely, then it was easier to investigate him.

Which was exactly what she wanted.

After listening to a rather long preaching session, Claire decided to contact Mustang. As far as she was concerned, she had seen enough "miracles" to argue that Cornello-sama was indeed using the Philosopher's Stone. She herself was not an alchemist, so Mustang probably wouldn't take her word that he really was violating the laws of alchemy with just one or two sightings, but with several, she was certain that she had some sort of proof.

It had taken her a little while to find a telephone in Liore, but eventually she found a few public telephones booths. Sadly, there really wasn't anywhere where she could get a secure connection, but she wasn't going to make a big deal over it. It wouldn't be particularly hard to tell Colonel Mustang what she thought was going on without saying something suspicious.

Quickly dialing Colonel Mustang from inside the small glass room of the telephone booth, Claire sighed, thinking of what she had to tell him. Probably mostly just the stuff about the Philosopher's Stone…?

"Hello?" Mustang asked.

"Hi-hi," she greeted, pretending to be a girl contacting her friend or something. This way, she wouldn't sound like she was making a report or anything. "How've you been?"

"Good, but certainly you actually have something better to say than teenage girl chatter."

"How could you say that to the ever-helpful princess?" Claire asked, sounding absolutely devastated.

"Quite easily, actually," Mustang replied coolly.

"Hmph," Claire said, pouting. Boo, he was so boring. Why couldn't he learn to have some fun?

"I don't have all day to talk to you. Hurry up and state your report."

_I was just getting to that. Sheesh_, she thought irritably. "So anyways," she continued, "Cornello-sama performs some amaaaaaazing miracles. I can't believe it!"

"Oh?" Mustang asked, now sounding interested.

"He's the son of the sun god, Leto," she explained. "He was even able to turn a dried up spring into a spring of wine!"

Mustang paused for a moment, as if analyzing what she was saying. "…And how was he able to do that?" he asked.

"There were these red electric bolt things!" she replied. "They came from a red stone on a ring he was wearin—"

"Hm?" a rather slimy-sounding voice cut her off. "And who might you be talking to?"

Claire's heart jumped into her throat, and she froze. Someone was behind her, listening. How long had he been there? She hadn't noticed him come towards the telephone booth. She hadn't even noticed him open its glass door. She had made certain that her words sounded like any silly adolescent girl's, but something was wrong. She wouldn't yet dismiss the possibility that this was just an honest question, but it sounded more like a suspicious inquiry…

Claire flipped around to see who the speaker was.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note:<strong> It's only the second chapter, and I've already left y'all with a cliff hanger. Yes, I'm evil. Yes, you have to deal with it.

I made up some random story about Leto. Yay for randomness.

Was the way I portrayed Cornello alright? One of my friends told me that she thought the way I portrayed his thoughts was a bit extreme.

I love feedback, so if there are any typos, hard-to-understand things, grammar mistakes, or anything else of the sort, feel free to inform me in a review ;D


	3. Liore 2: Further Investigations

Thanks to alerters/favoriters/reviewers~

Disclaimer: FMA belongs to Hiromu Arakawa

* * *

><p><em>Recap: Claire successfully managed to get into the church and got to know Roze. Roze took her to see one of Cornello's miracles, and Claire saw that it was being done with something that seemed like the Philosopher's Stone. Just as she was contacting Mustang, someone spoke from behind her. Claire flipped around to see who it was...<em>

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 3 ~ Further Investigations<strong>

Yven stood in front of her, wearing a cocky smirk. His previous atmosphere of a pleasant, entirely normal guy was dispelled.

"Just my friend," Claire answered, unable to come up with something that made more sense. She attempted to look as calm as possible as she hung up the phone, despite the protesting Mustang on the other end. The reality being that she was pretty sure she was caught red-handed, but it didn't hurt to try to act innocent before condemning herself.

"Really now?" Yven asked, his benign demeanor somewhat returning, but he still seemed threatening. Claire could see already though that Yven was most likely anything but "benign". Guys like him tended to be the most slippery sort of all.

"Haha," she laughed. "Yup! I was telling him all about Cornello-sama's miracles!"

"Funny," Yven said. "That's not the impression I got."

"Eh?" Claire asked innocently, even though she knew she was getting backed further into a corner. "I'm sorry I gave you the wrong impression then."

A rather malicious look appeared in Yven's eyes. "Nah, I'm quite sure I got the right impression, Girlie."

"Well then what might that 'right impression' be?" Claire inquired nervously.

"I was of the impression that Lil' Miss Girlie here was reporting to the military about the Head Priest's Philosopher's Stone."

Claire sighed in resignation. And she had gone through all that trouble when talking to Mustang to make it not obvious what she was trying to tell him, but this weirdo found out anyways. …How though?

But the good thing was that if he was going to attack or arrest her, he already would have done it… which meant that he wanted something.

"Whoops, I got found out," Claire said. "…So what do I have to do to make you keep your mouth shut?"

"Smart Girlie, aren't you?" Yven asked. "How 'bout some cash?"

Claire glared at the man in front of her. She hated situations like this; they were always trouble. She should have watched this man more closely. At least it would be easy to shut him up though. A greedy man like this was easy to deal with.

"100,000 cenz should do it," Yven cooed.

…Or not. This greedy man was being overly greedy, and that made him a pain.

Grrr. Why'd she have to go and get herself caught? And by this corrupt exploiter no less? Stupid, stupid, stupid Claire. Grrr. That was a hell of a lot of money! And there was no way that Colonel Mustang was going to help her pay it since he was going to blame her for the fact that she had been discovered. So it was going to be coming out of her salary. Grrr.

But she couldn't have him going around telling everyone she was a spy for the military though.

"Alright then," Claire agreed, not having any other choice. "You'll keep quiet then I take it?"

"Of course," Yven said.

Claire clapped her hands together, thinking the deal was sealed. "Grea—"

"Not." A creepy smile once twisted its way onto Yven's lips as he shrugged. "I have no interest in money, Girlie."

* * *

><p>Oh God.<p>

Even the day after her oh-so-wonderful run-in with Yven, Claire felt like pulling her hair out. That guy was so aggravating. How dare he toy with her like that. Claire took a few deep breaths to calm herself down, but she was still ranting about Yven in her head. After he made a total fool out of her, he proceeded to make an even bigger fool out of her. In her anger, she lost her head a bit and tried to slug him, which he dodged like it was a piece of cake. Grrrr.

Okay, Claire. Take deeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep breaths.

She continued to think of how she would get back at him for that later.

breaths.

And she hadn't even managed to come up with a way to make him keep his mouth shut.

Frankly, she just wanted to bang her head against a wall, except that wouldn't help her any and it would just give her a headache.

So she decided against that option.

Well, on the bright side of things, she hadn't seen Yven yet today. _So maybe_, Claire thought hopefully, _he fell off a cliff or something_. Sadly, she also knew it probably wasn't so.

Not in the least succeeding with calming herself down, Claire ate a lollipop while Roze ran around the market buying stuff. It seemed you could buy everything here – flowers, threads, pottery, wood… Claire found that there were even certain foods she couldn't identify, despite all the books she'd read on Liorian culture before coming here. The townspeople knew all the vendors, and many of the vendors were conversing with the townspeople as they sold their goods. Sometimes, children would run by and wave at them. In Roze's case, she didn't just know one or two vendors, she knew all of them. Each and every one of them seemed glad to see her and they all greeted her warmly as she bought her goods.

"Claire, are you alright?" Roze eventually asked. "You look really…"

Claire realized that she probably looked like she wanted to kill something. Well, that certainly wouldn't do. A good follower of Leto wouldn't get angry about things. Rather, she'd believe it was a challenge sent to them by Leto.

"Haha, sorry," Claire laughed. "Just thinking 'bout something."

Roze blinked. "If you say so," she said, and then she was quiet. She looked as if she was thinking about something – something important, at least to her. Although people were still greeting her, she seemed more lost in thought when she talked to them.

Claire wondered what Roze was thinking about. If that something was important to Roze, maybe it was important to her somehow as well. _And if it wasn't… well it was still a mystery! _Claire thought excitedly.

"Whatcha thinking about?" Claire asked curiously.

"Oh um…" Roze answered nervously. "Nothing really."

…

Claire pouted that Roze hadn't answered her question. She would have to wait till later to ask again; if she pried too much at once, it could have negative effects.

As such, Claire decided to think about the other mysteries she had yet to solve. She'd gathered a decent amount of information over the past few days, but she only really had the big picture. She didn't really need to tell Mustang any more than the big picture, but there was still one important thing she was missing:

The Head Priest's motive. Why was he doing what he was doing?

Other than that, there were several little details she didn't know:

1. How did the Head Priest get a hold of the Philosopher's Stone?

2. Who was Yven?

3. What was he up to? Was he in league with the Head Priest?

Come to think of it, if Yven knew what she was up to, then it was dangerous for her to try and contact Mustang again. The pros of that were that she wouldn't have to listen to Mustang's sarcasm and that she would have plenty of time to solve all of Liore's mysteries. The cons were that she would have no idea when (or if) Mustang wanted her to pull out and she was completely on her own, at least until Mustang sent someone else in.

Which, she assumed, he would, if he received no further contact since he had probably heard Yven speak in the background and her hurriedly hang up. He was smart enough to figure out that she was in trouble, so she wasn't going to worry too much.

"Good afternoon, Roze," an elderly woman greeted as Claire and Roze approached her shop. "I haven't seen you around for awhile. How have you been?"

"I've been well, thanks," Roze answered. "And you?"

"Simply dandy!" Agatha-san laughed heartily, hands on her hips and everything. Claire was taken aback for a second; she hadn't quite expected that reaction. Roze, on the other hand, looked like she was quite used to it.

"That's nice to hear," Roze said.

"Who's this other young one here?" Agatha-san asked merrily, gesturing towards Claire, who was currently processing Agatha-san's personality. At first sight, she had looked like one of those super-polite, well-spoken elders, but that clearly wasn't so. Claire noted to herself that she needed to stop automatically judging by appearance. Mistakes like that could be fatal, especially with guys like Yven running around.

"Ah, she's…" Roze began.

"I'm Claire!" Claire answered, deciding that she wasn't going to let Roze do all the talking. In most cases, the friendlier you were, the more people would open up to you, and as someone looking for information, that's exactly what she wanted. "Nice to meet you."

"Hohohoho," the woman laughed again. "A perky one, arent'cha? Nice to meet you, too!"

"Yup!" Claire said jovially and then looked at the contents of Agatha-san's vending bin. Roze had already been examining them to find the ripest, reddest apples. "So you sell apples?"

"An apple a day keeps the doctor away," the old woman said, cocking a crooked smile with lots of missing teeth. "But I was an adamant beauty when I was young, convinced that some wicked witch would trick me into eating a poisoned apple. So now I am the witch herself! Bwahahahaha!"

"Does that mean all of your apples are poisoned then?" Claire asked teasingly. She knew that if they really were poisoned, the Agatha-san certainly wouldn't have any customers. Besides, Roze seemed to know her pretty well.

"You never know, little girl," the woman teased right back. "Perhaps they are."

"Ehh?" Claire said, feigning a mixture of fear and surprise. "Roze, the apples are dangerous! We can't buy any!"

"Huh?" Roze asked. Evidently, she hadn't heard any of Claire and Agatha-san's conversation so far. Claire sighed.

"Haha," Agatha-san said. "We're just playing with ya, Roze."

"Oh," Roze said, grabbing another apple from the bin. "Um…Okay. How much for these apples?"

"I'll give ya a discount," Agatha-san said. "You should come by more often."

"Really? Thank you!" Roze exclaimed happily, clapping her hands together.

"Haha, no problem. Five hundred cenz should do it for the whole bag."

"Okay," Roze agreed, pulling some money out of her pocket.

Just then, a bald man with a mustache called out, "Ah, Roze! Come here for a sec!"

"Alright!" Roze said, and then handed the money to Claire. "Hold on a sec, Agatha-san. Claire, can you pay for me?"

"Eh?" Claire asked, surprised. "Yeah, sure," she said, but by then Roze had already dashed off to help the man.

"Whew, that girl always has someone to talk to," Agatha-san said. "Friendly youngster, she is."

"Well, she is really nice after all," Claire said, deciding to take this moment to find out more about Roze as she counted out the money to pay Agatha-san. One of the best ways to get into a conversation with someone: compliments.

"Indeed. She has already befriended you, and you're a new face around here, are ya not?"

"You could tell?"

"Bwahahaha! Of course. Everyone knows everyone around here."

"True," Claire stated. "By the way, when did Cornello-sama first arrive here?"

"Hoho, just about a year ago, honey," Agatha-san said. "He's really changed things for us."

"Oh yes, for me too," Claire agreed, remembering that she was supposed to be a devout follower of Letoism. "He's a beacon of hope."

"Haha, yeah," the old woman said, more serious this time. A few moments ago, she seemed like your average crazy old woman, but now her gaze was softer. "Out of all of us though, I think the Head Priest has brought Roze the most hope."

"How so?"

"Cornello-sama preaches that the Sun God Leto's followers' souls will live forever and that He can raise the dead... For Roze, who lost the only person she ever had in an accident shortly before Cornello-sama arrived, the hope he brought is probably the only thing that is keeping her going."

"The only person she's ever had?" Claire asked, sensing that this might be the answer to the previous mystery she had encountered as to what Roze was thinking about earlier.

"Her parents died shortly after she was born during our civil war," Agatha-san explained sadly. "And then a little over a year ago, her boyfriend, and also childhood friend, Cain died in an accident."

Claire was silent for a moment as she thought of a decent reply for the information she'd just heard. "…So Roze's faith in Cornello-sama stems from her desire to bring Cain back to life?"

"Yes," Agatha-san said.

"I see…" Claire said. "Leto really is all-powerful, isn't he?"

"Indeed," the old woman agreed. "I wonder, though, if returning the dead to the living is really the best thing to do…"

_A suit of armor holding Edward Elric's blood-soaked body ran desperately into the house._

"_Auntie!" the suit of armor called out. The voice was hollow, strangely echoing. _

_Winry and Aunt Pinako stood there shocked, eyes wide. Claire instinctively clapped her hands over her mouth, trying to process the sight before her. She'd seen the violet light shine from the Elrics' house before turning dangerously black, but she never would have expected this sort of outcome. It was too gruesome._

"_Please…Please save Nii-san!"_

"_Al…" Winry said nervously."Is that you?"_

_The Edward Claire remembered had two arms and two legs, and the Al Claire remembered had a human body. They'd disappeared for several months to relearn alchemy, and then when they finally came back, this happened. Somehow, to see the Elric brothers in such a state was terrifying. She'd known them to be strong, determined, courageous. Now they were only weak, begging, desperate._

In order to gain something, something of equal value must be lost.

_Edward Elric lost a leg; Alphonse Elric lost his whole body. It cost Ed an arm to bind Al's soul to the armor._

_What was the price of a soul?_

"…Yeah," Claire agreed after a moment, finally handing the old woman the money for the apples. Agatha-san was sharper than Claire thought she would be… Wisdom did indeed come with age.

The old woman smiled gently just as Roze ran back over to them.

"Claire, did you pay for the apples yet?" she asked.

"Yeah, just finished," Claire answered, grinning.

"Alright, let's go then," Roze said.

"Come again sometime won't you?" Agatha-san asked. "It was great having you!"

"Okay!" Roze said. "Bye!"

"See ya, Agatha-san," Claire said.

The old woman waved them off, saying, "I'll haunt ya if ya don't come back to visit me before I croak!"

* * *

><p>By the time Roze and Claire got back to the church, it was already evening… and it was actually quite chilly. So basically, Claire had gone from sweating torrents to shivering. But she had survived the challenge! Desert temperatures couldn't beat her. Ha!<p>

(But damn, she wanted a shower. She smelled disguuuuuuusting. Was Mustang hinting that she should carry deodorant with her at all times or something? What a conspiracy. Hmph. How dare he.)

Despite her want of a shower though, Claire ended up sitting on the church pews, observing Roze make her preparations for her offering. Part of the reason she had wanted to go to the market today was that she wanted to make an offering to Leto, and as a devout Letoist, how could Claire not also participate in this? As such, Claire found herself enduring her not-quite-so-good-smelling self for a little longer.

As Claire watched Roze make the preparations, she wondered how Roze managed to remain so devoted to Leto. If it was her, she knew she would ask "why" or "how" after pretty much every sentence in the Holy Book of Leto. It wasn't as if she'd throw the possibility that those things were actually possible away (she didn't _not_ believe in supernatural stuff), but she wouldn't just swallow it all without a lengthy explanation either.

Roze's unconditional faith didn't make a whole lot of sense to Claire, but Claire supposed Roze was just different than she was.

The only problem was that Cornello-sama was a fraud…What was he planning to do with all those who believed in his religion no matter what?

It would be good if he really didn't have any ill-intentions…

"This is your first time seeing an offering to Leto, isn't it?" Roze asked suddenly.

"Yeah," Claire responded. Neither of them had spoken for awhile now, so Roze had broken her train of thought.

"Want me to explain the process to you?"

"Sure!"

Clasping her hands together and closing her eyes as if to imagine Leto, Roze explained, "See, the Sun God Leto watches over us. His warm rays of sunlight shine down upon us."

"Yeah."

"In order to have the offerings reach him, we must somehow allow him to consume them," she continued, picking up one of the apples as well as a match and holding them over a big metal pot filled with crinkled paper and branches. "The sun is an entity of fire… so we burn our offerings."

"Ohh!" Claire said, sounding interested. "I get it!"

"Mhm," Roze smiled and lit the match. Throwing both the match and apple into the pot, she said, "I know food offerings are small, but I don't have much else to offer."

"I'm sure Leto understands that!" Claire said. "He knows you're doing your best."

"You think so?"

"Yup!"

"Thank you," Roze said, looking flattered, and then her expression changed to one of reverence. "His miracles are amazing. If you pray to him every day and show him your faith, he can even make the dead come back to life."

"…Yeah," Claire agreed, but she found the idea of raising the dead to be rather unsettling. Still, she decided to continue to pretend to support Roze. In her position, there really wasn't much else she could do anyways. Without thinking, Claire asked, "You want to be together with your boyfriend again right?"

Roze froze.

Claire realized how inconsiderate and rude what she'd just said was. "I'm… sorry," she said. "Agatha-san told me."

"No, no," Roze said apologetically, as if nothing at all was wrong. Had Claire imagined it? Roze smiled. "Don't feel bad about it. With the help of Leto, he'll come back one day after all."

"Yes, definitely," Claire said confidently. Then, out of pure curiosity to see if there was any substance behind Roze's belief, she asked, "Have you seen Leto revive anyone before?"

Roze's eyes widened for a second as she stared into the fire, but again, she covered for it. "Oh no," she said. "For such a feat to be accomplished, an incredible amount of faith is necessary."

"Ah, no wonder then."

"…Yes," Roze agreed. After that though, she was oddly quiet. Claire couldn't help but wonder if Roze's faith wasn't nearly as strong as she wanted other people to believe it was… or perhaps if it was something that she believed in simply because she was too afraid to face the truth.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's note<strong>: For any of you who are wondering, deodorant was invented in 1888.

I know I'm only three chapters into this story, but what do you think I could improve so far? Con/crit is cool ;D

Also, I love reviews guys. Gimme feedback! Even one-word feedback is appreciated~

Hope you enjoyed the chapter!


	4. Liore 3: Arrival of the Elrics

Disclaimer: FMA belongs to Arakawa Hiromu. Claire belongs to me.

* * *

><p><em>Recap: After her encounter with Yven, Claire walked around town with Roze. An old lady called Agatha told her that Cain died shortly before Cornello's arrival about a year ago. When they return to the church, Claire can't help but question if Roze's faith isn't quite what it seems to be.<em>

* * *

><p>Two weeks later<p>

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 4 ~ Arrival of the Elrics<strong>

"Sorry, sorry," a man apologized. After seeing Ed at the fountain of wine, he had mistaken him for a Liorian child trying to drink from it. He was a middle-aged guy with a graying mustache and a brown hat, and it looked as if he sold some refreshments, as well as some other stuff that Ed didn't totally recognize, but he figured it was just some sort of local delicacy or something. "Travelers like you wouldn't have known that there's a spring of wine."

"Liore City must be a wealthy city to have a fountain of wine," Ed commented blissfully. Although it may have appeared that his blissfulness was for the fountain of wine, it was much more likely to be for the glass of juice the man had served him. _Damn Mustang for sending me into this blazing heat, and forget that agent he had apparently lost contact with. Without the possibility of the Philosopher's Stone being here, I already would have left_, Ed thought irritably as drank down his juice.

"Yeah, it's all thanks to –" the man paused. "Oh! I forgot," he said, reaching up towards a switch hanging down from the ceiling of his shop. After he turned it on, a rather mystical sort of music began to play… music that Ed couldn't help hearing from the radios of people all around town as they all joined in and began to pray.

"To you children of God who live on this earth…" a broadcasted voice spoke over the radio. Ed, who had been in awe for a moment, was now quite puzzled as the voice continued, "Pray and you shall be saved. The Sun God Leto shines light upon you."

"What's this?" Ed asked with a mixture of bewilderment and curiosity.

The man at the shop glared at Ed for interrupting the broadcast.

"A religious broadcast?" Al guessed.

"You two are a pretty odd pair," the man said, hands on his hips. Well, it wasn't as if he didn't have a point though. Ed sipped more of his juice as the broadcast continued and the man examined his two customers. "Are you guys street performers or something?"

Not quite expecting that, Ed found himself spitting out his juice at the preposterousness of that notion. "Hey, man, where did you get _that_ idea?" he demanded.

"If you're not performers, why did you come here?" the man asked quizzically.

"Oh, we're searching for something," Ed explained. He didn't really want to go into detail though, so he changed the subject. "Anyways, what's this broadcast about?"

"It's Cornello-sama."

"Who's that?"

"You don't know the representative of the Sun God Leto?" the man asked incredulously. Sheesh, you would have thought Ed had asked something totally ridiculous.

"That's why I asked…"

"Cornello-sama. He can make miracles!" a customer explained excitedly.

Another customer added, "It's thanks to him that this city, which was abandoned in the desert, has become so wealthy."

Suddenly, a whole crowd of people gathered to explain the awesomeness of this Cornello guy. Ed wasn't a big fan of religious guys like him. "I'm not interested in religion…" Ed said, covering his ears before he decided that the best way to lose the instantly generated mini mob of Cornello's believers was to leave. "Let's go, Al," he suggested.

"Ah, okay," Al agreed, standing up. But then he accidentally banged his head onto the shop roof, causing the shopkeeper's radio to fall on the ground and break.

"Hey now, sir!" the man complained. "That's what happens when you're dressed up like that!"

"Sorry about that, I'll fix it," Ed apologized.

"Sorry. Nii-san, I'll do it."

"Okay."

* * *

><p>So far, everything was going as planned. Cornello had accepted the fake Philosopher's Stone, and he believed that it was a real one. He had revived a place plagued by Civil War, and the people loved him. And he was their tool.<p>

Lust watched the people of Liore from the shadows. Wearing her dull green cloak, no one saw her, and that was how it was supposed to be. The people had visibly brightened since Cornello came, all of them foolishly believing every word he said without question, particularly a girl named Roze.

There was only one odd thing that had caught Lust's eye so far. There was one more who acted as faithful to Leto as Roze, and that was another girl who called herself Claire. She was a bit of a mystery. Lust had no doubt of Roze's faith, but when people weren't watching her, Claire seemed to pay little attention to Leto.

She was always asking questions, almost as if she was investigating something.

Lust shook the glass in front of her. The two that she had been told to watch, Edward and Alphonse Elric, had arrived a few minutes ago, but they weren't doing anything particularly special as of yet. Apparently, rumors of Cornello's "miracles" had reached their ears already. Envy had said he had found something fun to do earlier, and she wondered if it didn't have something to do with starting a conflict with the military. That would explain how the military had heard of the "miracles," despite Liore's lack of connection to the rest of society. Even with the foreboding rumors surrounding the Philosopher's Stone, the legend of its abilities to bypass the Law of Equivalent Exchange never failed to entice people.

"That was amazing!" the shopkeeper was saying. He had just witnessed Alphonse Elric fix a radio he'd accidentally broken with alchemy. "You're able to perform miracles as well?"

"What's that supposed to mean?" Edward asked.

"We're alchemists," Alphonse explained.

"The name 'Elric Brothers' should be pretty famous," Edward Elric added.

"Alchemists?" one spectator asked.

"So it wasn't a miracle," another said.

"I haven't heard of any alchemists in this area," said a third.

"The Full Metal Alchemist, Edward Elric," Lust said, deciding some explanation was needed. These people were so far away from the rest of society that they couldn't even recognize alchemy when they saw it, let alone recognize a state alchemist. "You're quite famous around East City. You're known as the rumored genius alchemist."

But even with that, the people naturally got the wrong idea and thought that it was Alphonse that was the Full Metal Alchemist. Well, her duty was done. Lust spoke no more, just letting the scene before her play out as it willed.

* * *

><p>Whyyyyyyy?<p>

Why was this happening?

That Mustang had put her into quite a pickle… argh. He just had to send Ed and Al in, didn't he? Well, she knew it was because they were after the Philosopher's Stone and there was a lead here, but still. Arghhhhh. Ed and Al's presence was trouble, trouble, and more trouble. She hadn't seen them for several years now, but it wasn't as if her appearance had changed so much that they wouldn't recognize her (In fact, she was pretty sure that she looked almost exactly the same). If they recognized her, they might accidentally admit that they knew her, and she couldn't have that.

Claire took another bite of her cookie.

And then there was Yven. After he confronted her, he disappeared to who-knew-where for a few days, but now he was back. Except she really couldn't figure out what he was up to. He could reveal who she was at anytime, but he wasn't doing it. Still, even during those few days he was gone, she didn't want to take the chance of contacting Mustang again. Rather, he was treating the whole situation like a game. One time, he had almost revealed her identity to Cornello-sama, but then he'd covered it up, turned around, and smirked at her while mouthing, "Whoops, slip of the tongue."

Grrrrrr… he made her angry. One day, she'd learn to read minds, and then she'd finally know what he was up to. Then she'd be the one who was torturing him, and not the other way around!

So now she was avoiding three people instead of one. She felt an awful lot like she was playing hide-and-go-seek, except she was always the one who was hiding and there were an awful lot of people after her.

Well, Ed and Al didn't mean any harm, though.

(The problem was that Roze wanted to introduce them to her, and she didn't want to be introduced to them, but it would be awkward if she told Roze that, so whenever Roze came by with them, Claire carefully made sure to disappear.)

But it was always at those moments, those moments when she didn't want to be seen, where she had a very high tendency to run into Yven.

What was he, a stalker or something?

Presently, Ed and Al were downstairs with Roze on the main floor of the church though, so it would be alright as long as Yven didn't pop out of nowhere. Before coming up here, she had heard Ed questioning Roze about Letoism. Evidently, he hadn't been fooled by Cornello-sama's miracles anymore than she had, but he was also a lot more open about it. Especially if he had found out about the whole "reviving the dead" thing, Ed was probably ripping the religion to pieces.

She understood why.

Ed and Al both knew firsthand what happened when you messed with life.

Finishing her cookie, Claire snuck up to Cornello's office. She still hadn't found out what his motive was and whether it was good or bad. It was too bad that she couldn't magically insert a recording device or something into Cornello's office. Sadly, that sort of technology had yet to exist. Otherwise, she'd be making great use of it. All the time.

The door of his office was closed, but if she pressed her ear against the door, she could hear him talking.

"The Elric Brothers?" a voice that Claire identified as Clay's asked.

"I have heard that the older brother received the title of National Alchemist at the age of twelve. He is also known as the Fullmetal Alchemist," Cornello-sama told him.

"That little kid?"

Claire listened intently, hoping to hear something of value. So they knew who Ed was already eh? It was becoming clearer and clearer to her that Ed didn't know the meaning of "inconspicuous."

"He is a dog of the military. The military has put its eyes on this wealthy city and is trying to interfere with things. I must protect my people and my city. Clay…"

"…I abide by God's will."

Oh shoot, Clay was going to walk out of Cornello-sama's office now. She could hear him turning around to leave. With the stealth of a cat, Claire made her way down the hall and was already around the corner by the time Clay left the room.

What was it though, that Cornello-sama was implying that Clay should do?

It was from this that she would judge his motives.

* * *

><p>Ed and Al were enemies of God.<p>

Sinners.

Standing on the platform on the far wall of the underground chamber, all Roze could do was watch the scene play out before her. Cornello-sama stood next to her, but it felt as if he was someone else, as if he was someone she didn't know. She felt like she was watching everything through a screen; she was but a spectator who couldn't do anything.

_Cornello-sama was admitting that he was using the Philosopher's Stone? _Roze's mind asked, despite her attempt to repress the thought. _Why? Why was he using it? Wasn't that for alchemy?_

If Cornello-sama's miracles were lost, what would happen to this city? He had been the one to save it from Civil War to begin with… No matter how much bloodshed there was, the military had turned a blind eye.

_Was what Ed said back when they saw one of Cornello-sama's miracles together true? Was it all really alchemy then?_

Now that they had finally found peace, the military wanted to take it away from them again.

_No! It wasn't. It couldn't be. There had to be some explanation…_

Why? Why couldn't they just leave them alone?

Why did the military insist on taking away their hope?

_But even Cornello-sama had admitted that he was using the Philosopher's Stone._

The military just wanted to throw them back into despair… Wasn't it the military's duty to protect its country?

_Ed's leg… the bird was going to crush it. _

That's why… that's why this was alright.

_The lion-like creature was devouring Ed's arm. Stop… No… she didn't want to see this!_

This… was their punishment. Yes. Their punishment.

_Crash!_ The lion was thrown to the ground. But its fangs weren't bloody; Ed's arm looked as if nothing had happened to it.

"Roze, look carefully," Ed said, tearing off his red jacket. "This is the body of one who encroached upon human transmutation, the territory of God… the sinner's body.

_Machine arms and legs? Automail? _

"You tried to perform human transmutation?" Cornello-sama asked. His expression wasn't the one she knew. His benevolent smile was gone, replaced with a malicious sneer. "You violated the most forbidden taboo!"

"_You will just get burned if you get too close to the sun."_

"I see, so that's how it is. That's why your title is Fullmetal! The Fullmetal Alchemist!" Cornello-sama continued. "I have been wondering why a kid like you had a stern title like 'Fullmetal.' Roze, it is forbidden to transmute things to gold in alchemy. In addition to this, there is one other thing that has been forbidden by tacit agreement. That is… human transmutation."

Ed and Al turned their gaze to the ground. They had been like her. They had wanted to bring someone back to life.

"You foolish children," Cornello-sama chided nastily. "You experimented with alchemy without even knowing the consequences!"

"No, we…!" Al started. "We just… wanted to see Mom's smile again."

"But you failed!" He was almost laughing at them. It was cruel… too cruel.

_Was this really Cornello-sama? _

"Yeah, my little brother lost his body, and I lost my left leg and right arm. This is what happened when we tried to resurrect just one person with two people," Ed said. "Roze, this is the result of trying to resurrect someone. Are you prepared to face the consequences?"

_That… that was what it would take to resurrect Cain? _

Fear.

She could feel it welling up in her heart.

"Do not worry," a voice said. Roze turned her gaze towards Cornello, whose fatherly expression had returned. "I have the Philosopher's Stone that Leto gave me."

So the miracles really were the blessings of Leto and not just created with alchemy! How could she ever let her faith in him falter? Roze relaxed slightly.

"…And I'm not an amateur, like they are."

"Don't kid us!" Ed exclaimed angrily. "There are things that cannot be done, no matter how much you try!"

"Then why do you seek the Philosopher's Stone?" Cornello-sama scoffed. "You must think that you will be able to transmute your mother if you use this."

"Stop assuming things, baldy," Ed said. "We just want our original bodies back… although there is a chance that it might not work."

"We'll say this one more time," Al stated. "Please give us the Philosopher's Stone."

"National Alchemist, God's wrath will fall upon you."

"Get down here, you third-rate magician! I'll show you how inferior you are to us!"

A sharp red glow. Crackling. The light of one of Cornello-sama's transmutations caught Roze's eye.

No… He couldn't possibly be transmuting that. It was too brutal. Cornello-sama would never do that.

Horror gripped Roze as she backed away.

Cornello-sama was firing rounds and rounds of bullets at Ed and Al. The stench of gunpowder filled the air. There was no way they'd survive.

It was true. It was just as Cornello-sama had said. They were God's enemies. They had betrayed God, gone against His will. They were sinners.

…But did they really deserve death for that?

* * *

><p>The next morning, after an awful lot of shooting and screaming and unnecessary drama, Claire and Roze walked down the old stone stairs leading to the prison below the church. It seemed to her that Cornello-sama generally avoided letting people come to this area of the church, even if it was to clean. Unlike the rest of the church, this area was hardly as well-kept. The walls were crumbling, and the stench of mildew filled the air. The bricks were uneven, some protruding farther than others from the wall. Each step she took echoed slightly, and she could hear the quiet dripping of water in some places. Thankfully though, it wasn't too dark. Lamps in the walls kept the hallways lighted along the way.<p>

Claire found herself to be a bit preoccupied with all the chaos that had happened during the day. She was a bit preoccupied though with all the racket and chaos that had gone on yesterday. First she'd heard a juicy bit of conversation between Cornello-sama and Clay during which the first implied that the latter do something to uphold God's will. Shortly thereafter, there were a couple of gun shots, and a little while longer after that, it sounded like someone was firing some sort of machine gun. Boy was she glad that Ed and Al weren't secret operatives like her. That would most certainly be a wreck. But anyways, judging by the fact that things had quieted down, Ed and Al had probably been caught. Cornello-sama wouldn't decide to do anything to them immediately though, so she wasn't going to worry about them too much. Still, did they have to go and get themselves caught? Now she was going to have to rescue them.

Not right now though. At the moment, Roze was kindly leading her to where the prison cell was, so what she was currently doing was simply determining their location. If she had to be their knight on a white horse, then neither of them was any better at being Prince Charming than Colonel Mustang. She sighed.

Well, at least Ed and Al had indeed managed to clear up whether or not Cornello-sama was good or bad. At the very least, he was a psychopath. More likely, he was planning to do something crazy that was a threat to the military. That would give her something to report in… Even if Cornello-sama was already gone by the time she reported it (and with Ed and Al causing so much trouble, he probably would be), it was still something the military would want to know. She didn't have all the details of what he was planning yet, but she figured that they'd be revealed soon enough if she took the time to do the investigating. Ed and Al were successfully making him show his true colors.

With everything that had happened so far, Claire wondered if Roze could still believe in Cornello-sama. Roze had been talking with Ed shortly before the shooting started, so there was a fairly high chance that she was there when it happened. Evidence against Cornello-sama's good nature was popping up right and left… no matter how strongly she believed in him, eventually she would realize that he really wasn't such a good man.

Come to think of it, the only thing that was really tying Roze so strongly to Cornello-sama was her belief that faith in Leto would bring her boyfriend back to life… It was probably what was keeping her going.

In that case, it would take quite a lot to break her faith in Cornello-sama. She wouldn't want to let go of what little hope she had…

From what Roze had said rather excitedly before they came down here to bring Ed food though, Cornello-sama had indeed managed to revive Cain already. Was the Philosopher's Stone so great that it could even raise the dead? How was that possible? Raising the dead… if it was possible with the Philosopher's Stone, wouldn't an incredible number of people be researching the Philosopher's Stone? Sure it was just a legend, but almost everybody has at least one person that they want to bring back to life…

"How did meeting Cain again go?" Claire asked suddenly without thinking. She had been there after Ed and Al performed the human transmutation… Unlike Ed, she wasn't a scientist, so she wasn't going to close-mindedly turn down any possibility for this to be possible, but it still didn't make a whole lot of sense, especially with the shady motives that Cornello-sama appeared to possess.

"Oh, um.." Roze looked nervous. "Cornello-sama said his body would be completed in a few days, so I couldn't see him yet."

"Ah, I see," Claire said. If that was a lie, it would only work for a short time span though…

"I heard him say my name!" Roze said happily. "I can't believe he's really back. It's like a dream come true."

A dream come true eh..? Just praying and believing, that seemed too easy. And "Leto" probably didn't even exist, considering as those "miracles" were created by the Philosopher's Stone, not Leto's power. "Leto sure is amazing…" Claire said. "He can even bring back the dead with his powers…"

It was only for a moment, but Claire saw Roze's gaze drop to the floor uneasily.

"Ah, we're here," she smiled. Apparently this was the prison cell. It was entirely surrounded in chipped gray brick, with only a small door for an entrance. "Do you want to come in with me?"

"I'll wait outside," Claire said, trying to politely turn down Roze's offer. She still wasn't sure now would be a good time to reveal herself to Ed. While Roze opened the door, Claire decided to stand on the other side of the wall so that she could still hear what was going on but couldn't be seen. She liked advantageous locations like this.

"Can you feed me since my arms are like this right now?" Ed asked jokingly as Roze walked in. Before opening the door, Roze had looked slightly apprehensive, and Claire thought her friend act would have been better if she had gone with her. She still didn't want to be seen by Ed though, so that was out of the question.

Instead of Roze's reply to him, Claire heard only the clink of the metal food tray as Roze placed it on the stone floor and her echoing footsteps, already retreating from the room.

She was hiding from Ed.

"Was he really your boyfriend?"

Roze's footsteps stopped, but she said nothing. Then, she ran out of the cell, closing the door behind her.

Hmm. Well, that was certainly suspicious. Time for a questioning session.

"Roze?" Claire asked. "Is something wrong?"

Roze clenched her fists and stared at the ground. From Roze's reaction to what Ed said, something wasn't right with Cain's resurrection.

She opened her mouth several times but said nothing, as if she wasn't sure whether it was alright to say what she wanted to say.

"Roze?" Claire asked again. "Did something happen?"

"N-no – " Roze began, but Claire didn't let her finish. She didn't want to let Roze try and deny whatever was happening; she wanted to know what Cornello-sama had done.

"Did something go wrong with the resurrection?"

Roze averted her gaze from the floor and looked at Claire uncertainly. She looked like she was trying to determine whether or not she could trust Claire with whatever she was going to say next.

Claire felt a slight stab of guilt. Roze hadn't done anything wrong, but no one was really on her side. Cornello-sama clearly had his own schedule, and the possibility that he could have brought Cain back was quickly dwindling. Roze thought Claire was her friend, but in reality… this was all just part of her job.

"…There were feathers," she eventually said.

"Feathers?" Claire asked, burying whatever guilt she may have felt. She wasn't a saint; sometimes she did rotten things. She had done far more crooked things than this before… the only thing that made this time stand out was that Claire could already tell that everything was falling apart for Roze. "What do you mean?"

"Cain's incomplete body was hidden behind a curtain," Roze explained. "But beside the curtain… there were blue and green feathers."

"Why would there be feathers?" Claire inquired. She wanted to hear what Roze thought. She already suspected that Cornello-sama had done some sort of chimera transmutation. She had read about those beings in Central's library awhile ago.

"I… I don' t know." Roze began, her eyes shifting to the floor again. "What if… what if everything Cornello-sama has said has been a lie? What if he really couldn't bring Cain back?"

Claire was quiet for awhile. Well, this was certainly a… change. Roze was doubting Cornello-sama. She looked miserable. Claire couldn't help but feel sorry for her. "…We could ask Cornello-sama," she finally suggested.

Roze still looked unsure, but she nodded in a silent agreement.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's note:<strong> I know that that one part from Roze's PoV might be confusing, but I like the way I wrote it. I was trying to show the conflict in Roze's mind.

I hope you guys can review. My friend told me that she tried to leave me a review this morning, but it kept giving her an error message... x_x...

**What do you guys think of my portrayal of Roze?**

Thanks for reading~ Review please ;D


	5. Liore 4: Faced with the Truth

Disclaimer: Fullmetal Alchemist belongs to Arakawa Hiromu. Claire belongs to me.

* * *

><p><em>Recap: The Elrics finally arrived in Liore, and Roze found out that Cornello was indeed relying on the Philosopher's Stone for his miracles. Cornello caputures Ed, and he tells Roze that Cain has been brought back to life. However, Roze has been feeling more and more uncertainty towards Cornello, and unsure of whether or not Cain has truly been revived, Roze and Claire go to see Cornello.<em>

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 5 ~ Faced with the Truth<strong>

_Roze hid in the corner of a crumbling building, covering her ears. She hated the sounds of the shooting, of the ear-piercing screams, of the constant odor of gunpowder. She wanted them to stop… but the only time they ever quieted even was during the night when people slept. _

"_Yo, Roze," a boy's voice said as he tapped her on the shoulder. Roze turned around to find herself face-to-face with Cain. "You alright?"_

_Roze shook her head miserably._

_The boy scratched his head. "C'mon, Roze, it's just those dumb adults fighting again."_

"_Yeah, but…"_

"_It's just like when we guys have a fight, and we feel the need to punch each other out over it!" Cain argued. "…Except they use guns and pitchforks!"_

"_There's a big difference between fists and guns and pitchforks, you know!" Roze shouted angrily. _

"_You think I don't know that?" Cain asked and then continued haughtily, "Sheesh, if I ever got a hold of a gun, my parents would definitely confiscate it from me 'cause they would think I was gonna get into a fight with it or something." _

"_Would you?"_

"_I'm not that dumb," Cain said. "But adults apparently are. Maybe we kids should be the ones confiscating the weapons from them instead of the other way around!"_

"_Pfft…" Roze almost found herself giggling. He was serious, and yet not serious in such a way that always made her laugh._

"_Watcha laughing at me for?" Cain asked, pretending to sulk. "We kids should be the ones protecting those moronic adults! It's true!"_

_Even with the agonizing noise outside the crumbling building, Roze couldn't help but smile. _

"_Well, since those dumb adults are such morons that they wouldn't appreciate my protection, do you want it?" Cain glanced towards her for a moment, and then averted his eyes. Roze thought she caught a slight tint of pink in his cheeks, but she was probably just imagining it. "It's not like I have anything else to do. I'll always be here, stuck around this dinghy old place."_

"_Sure," she answered happily. She was glad to have Cain around. And as he said, he would always be here…right?_

* * *

><p>Roze's hand reached up to knock on the door to Cornello-sama's room, but then let her hand fall back to her side.<p>

She tightly clutched the Holy Book beneath her other arm, as if wishing it could help her. Her mind was in turmoil.

Although Roze had walked through this door many times before, it was only this one time that it had seemed so intimidating. Nothing had physically changed about the door – it was still made out of the same oak wood, it still stood in the same metal door frame, it was still the same size. What had changed about it was what she was going to meet on the other side of it. Claire's amber eyes watched Roze's hesitation anxiously.

It was terrifying, the way that what was important to her was being taken away one way or another. She wanted to scream that it wasn't fair. Why did God do these things to her? Why did she have to suffer like this? She was frustrated.

Did she want to know the truth?

What if… what if Cain really hadn't come back?

_Why can't everything be easy for once? Why does it all have to be so hard?_ Roze's mind asked her as she bit her lip nervously. She could feel her arm shaking as she reached out to knock again. The black pit of fear in her stomach grew into a depthless ravine the closer her hand got to the door.

There were countless questions. She felt like a tower whose supports were slowly being taken away from it. She didn't know how much longer she could take this. Soon, the tower would collapse.

But what if the supports the tower had been fake to begin with? Did she want to live on truths that were all lies?

Taking a deep breath, Roze made her mind up to knock.

"The Philosopher's Stone was our little secret… remember?" a muffled voice asked from the other side of the door. The voice was not Cornello-sama's, but rather, a woman's.

_Who…?_ Roze paused, mid-knock.

At that moment, Claire grabbed Roze's hand to prevent her from knocking and silently clapped her hand over Roze's mouth. Claire held a finger over her mouth, gesturing that Roze be silent.

Roze couldn't help but feel frustrated that Claire had stopped her just when she had finally worked up the courage to knock, but she decided to follow Claire's instructions. She eyed Claire suspiciously, wondering what exactly she was up to. Claire now stood with her ear to the door, listening carefully.

"Y-yes…" Cornello-sama's voice responded, but the stutter in his voice divulged his fear of the woman. He was like a servant cowering in front of his empress.

"It was unnecessary to reveal all of that to the Fullmetal boy," the woman's voice said disapprovingly.

"Hahaha," the Head Priest laughed. "It won't matter. With the power of the Philosopher's Stone you gave me at my side, he doesn't stand a chance against me."

"Hm? Is that so?" the woman said, seeming somewhat amused. Roze wondered what she was hearing. What was going on here? That woman… that woman had given him the stone? Hadn't Cornello said it was from Leto? With each lie she found out about, the less likely it seemed that Cornello-sama had really revived Cain.

"All the foolish people in this town already believe my every word! It would be an entire town against the Fullmetal brat!" Cornello-sama said brazenly.

Roze's grip on the Holy Book tightened as she listened helplessly. She didn't want to hear anymore; she wanted to cover her ears and block it all out.

But she couldn't.

"They've all been in the palm of my hand ever since I first used this stone to cause that accident!" he continued.

_... It couldn't be._

Roze's own terror was a hand gripping her body, slowly crushing her soul, preventing her from moving.

She wanted this all to be a nightmare from which she would soon awaken.

But it wasn't.

And so, mortified, she could do nothing but stand there and listen.

"Yes," he went on, laughing maniacally. "That accident that crushed that idiotic girl's boyfriend to death!"

…_No. _

The Holy Book of Leto plummeted to the floor.

Roze's breathing was ragged as she backed away from the door, her eyes wide. Those words were all it took to shatter everything she wanted to believe in, to shatter the fragile glass that was hope.

_It was a lie… right? It had to all be a lie. It had to be._

She fled.

* * *

><p>Shoot, Roze had made too much noise. Claire had noticed before – the walls here were incredibly thin. If they had been able to hear the woman's and the Head Priest's voices through the door, then Head Priest and the woman could have heard the Holy Book Roze had been carrying fall to the floor before she ran off.<p>

Not good. Not good at all.

And the biggest problem of all was that she couldn't run from here. Or, technically, she could, but she didn't want to risk getting Roze in any danger. If she left in order to prevent herself from being discovered, then someone might still look around for the person who had been listening in on the conversation. Cornello-sama would hardly let that person go. On the other hand, if she stayed, they would assume that she was the only one who had heard it…

Picking up the Holy Book Roze had dropped, Claire waited to see if anyone would burst out of the High Priest's room in order to arrest her.

No one did.

So then Claire awkwardly looked around to see if anyone was coming. Perhaps Cornello-sama had telephoned his guards to catch an intruder or something.

No one came.

Just in case, she decided to listen too. But she didn't hear anything either.

That was certainly odd… perhaps they didn't hear Roze after all?

But she didn't hear their voices talking anymore either.

Well, it would be awkward if she just stayed here and waited around to get caught though. It had been about thirty seconds since Roze had left… Claire closed her eyes and let out a sigh. It was about time for her to high-tail it out of here as well.

Just then, as she turned to leave, something caught her attention though. Right in the direction she had been planning to go, a man stood in front of her, leaning against the wall with one hand. Claire almost let out a shriek of surprise, but she caught herself before any sound came out. It was just like the time at the telephone booth.

"Going somewhere, Girlie?" Yven asked, grinning evilly. This man was dangerous. It hadn't just been a coincidence that he had been able to sneak up on her that time at the telephone booth. She had been specifically looking for anyone coming down the hall just a few seconds earlier, and she hadn't noticed him at all.

"Umm…" Claire began, futilely pretending to be innocent. "Is there something you want from me?"

"Not particularly," Yven said, violet eyes glinting maliciously. She had never noticed his eyes before, but now they seemed like his most prominent feature.

"Well, I guess I'll be leaving …" her voice trailed off as she saw something incredibly bizarre happen.

Yven seemed to let off an intense white light as his form shrank into one that was just barely taller than hers. Long, spiky dark green hair replaced his previous short brown hair as his Liorian robes became a sleek black half-top and skort that revealed a tattoo of Ouroboros on his left thigh. He was no longer a middle-aged man but instead a teenager. He looked androgynous, but given his previous form, Claire decided to assume he was male. His dangerous violet eyes stared at her, and a wolfish grin spread across his lips, revealing an array of sharp teeth.

Perhaps it was a bit stupid to ask such a question to such a dangerous guy, but Claire couldn't help but ask, "Oh my god, how'd you do that?"

"Oh? So you like my cute form?"

"Well it's certainly very interesting!" Claire continued to babble, her previous fear of him completely forgotten. Like a storm chaser, her fascination outweighed her good judgment. "Your build is nothing like it was before! And that didn't look like alchemy; I wonder how you did that. You were even glowing! C'mon, tell me how you managed to do that! By the way, is your hair green because you injected chlorophyll into it or something? Is it made of chloroplasts? That's so cool! I never would have thought to create hair that can do photosynthesis!"

The teenage boy blinked. "Chlorophyll? Chloroplasts? Photosynthesis?" Then he started laughing sardonically. "What kind of idiotic theory is that?"

"How rude!" Claire huffed, putting her hands on her hips, but as the words left her mouth, she remembered the danger he posed. Sometimes, it wasn't until the storm chaser was face-to-face with the hurricane that he realized it could kill him… And in Claire's case, this guy was probably a lot more dangerous than she had previously realized.

The boy in front of her whistled. "You have some nerve to say that to me, you foolish human," he said as a wicked smile curled over his lips. "Especially when you're so weak that it makes me sick."

Claire glared at him defiantly, but that was the most she could do. "…I don't think there's anything wrong with preferring brains over brawn," she stated warily. She knew, though, that in this situation, he was right. One look at him told her that he could crush her as easily as a child could crush a withered leaf. She was helpless.

"Then I suppose that will make this easier for me," he said, walking closer to her. Claire would have taken a step back, but she knew it was useless. "You've found out a little too much today, you know?"

A sharp blow to her jaw was the last thing she remembered before everything went black.

* * *

><p>Roze frantically ran down the deserted hallway, barely able to see where she was going. Everything she heard must have been a lie. Cornello-sama couldn't possibly have been the one to kill Cain. She wouldn't believe what she had just heard. She believed in Leto, no matter what.<p>

Reaching the blue double doors that led to the room where Cain's incomplete body was said to be, Roze burst into the room. Everything was just the way she'd seen it the day before – light shining through the windows, a blue curtain behind which Cain was supposed to be, and feathers scattered across the floor.

Suddenly scared of the truth once more, Roze stepped in tentatively.

"Cain, I'm sorry," she apologized, nervously holding her hands to her chest. She cast her eyes to the ground slightly. "But I… I really wanted to talk with you a little."

"Ro…ze…" a voice croaked mechanically from behind the curtain.

Even though Cain's shadow was frail and thin, hearing Cain's voice gave her confidence. She could feel tears blurring her vision from joy and relief; she couldn't help but take a step closer. Her faith in Leto had been rewarded after all.

Behind her, the door eerily creaked open.

"High Priest!" Roze exclaimed in surprise when she turned around and found herself facing Cornello-sama. He smiled his usual calming smile, but for some reason, she found her heart pounding against her chest. "Um, I'm sorry for barging in like this…"

Cornello-sama's smile widened, and from nowhere, a gust of wind blew through the room. Windblown feathers fluttered in the air as the white curtain unveiled a wretched, half-dead bird.

_No… It wasn't a lie._

_Everything. Everything she heard was true._

"I'm sorry, Roze," Cornello-sama spoke. "Even with the power of the Philosopher's Stone, all I can do is sacrifice the lives of the birds to God and transfer those into another body… Did you not like the chimera that prattles like Cain?"

Nothing that was happening was registering in Roze's mind anymore.

The bird jumped off his perch, heavily landing on the floor. Its movements were jerky and uneven, forced.

"Say hello to Cain for me," Cornello-sama said before she heard the door close. He had left the room.

"Ro…ze…"

Roze backed away from the bird, hands holding her head in terror. _Please, someone_, she thought as the horrendous bird continued to speak her name like a broken record, _someone wake me up._

But she already knew.

She already knew that this nightmare was reality.

"CRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAW!" the monster screeched, suddenly attacking her. This was the end.

Several seconds later when the end hadn't come, Roze nervously looked up to see the beast twitching on the ground. The empty suit of armor called Al stood above it.

"It's dangerous here," he said, reaching his hand out to her. "Let's go."

Roze didn't move.

"Hurry."

* * *

><p>"What's with the extra baggage, Envy?" Lust inquired as Envy walked down the hall lugging the human girl. Gluttony stood next to her, looking spaced-out as usual.<p>

"Can I eat it?" Gluttony asked, drooling slightly.

"No, you fool," Envy said, glancing towards them. If it was okay for her to be killed, then he already would have done it. "We still have to stay here for a while and killing her would create a mess that I don't want to clean up. Do you think I would want to come up with a story about her sudden disappearance?"

"I suppose not," Lust said. She already knew that he might have to cover for that idiotic Cornello later on, so he couldn't transform into the girl. "So what are you planning to do with her?"

"Throw her in the dungeons with Fullmetal. What else? Then that useless priest can deal with her."

"If you say so," Lust said nonchalantly before walking off with Gluttony following her close behind.

As Lust and Gluttony went on their own way, Envy also went on his. He had long-since transformed back into "Yven." If anyone saw him, he would make up some excuse as to why he was carrying Claire. For all they knew, she fainted from being in the sun too long or something.

Yven's walking pace was slow, so the journey down to the dungeon was taking longer than Envy would have liked. He hadn't told Lust the real reason why he hadn't killed her yet. Although it would be a bit of a nuisance, he could easily have transformed into her temporarily, said some goodbyes, left, and there would have been no problem.

The actual reason he had kept her alive was because she was still a useful instrument in aggravating conflicts between the military and the public, even if she didn't know it. From what he could tell, she was an informant of sorts, and if he fed her information, it would be easy to get the military moving. She had certainly managed to speed things up quite a bit here in Liore by getting Fullmetal and his brother here so quickly. Interrupting her phone call to the military had been a great idea.

Well then again, even if that useless priest did kill her, it wasn't that big of a loss… Truth be told, Envy really didn't care if the girl was still breathing or not.

Finally arriving in the dungeon, Envy nabbed the keys and tossed her into Fullmetal's cell. It was a particularly easy job, considering that no one was really guarding the cells. Just the sight of the Fullmetal boy in the cell made his blood boil, but he couldn't do anything to him yet. Not now. Grinning in anticipation of his future vengeance on Edward Elric, Envy returned to the main floor of the church and resumed acting as Yven.

* * *

><p>Claire fought the urge to scream as she flew through the air. She couldn't have that damn Yven (or "Envy" as they had called him) find out that she had woken up long before he threw her into Ed's jail cell. She had to act like she was out cold until she was 100% sure he was gone because otherwise he might find out that she found out something that he didn't want her to.<p>

Claire hit the ground with a painful crash into the hard rock floor. Not only had he carried her like a sack of potatoes, he tossed her on the floor like a ragdoll with no care at all for her wellbeing. In her head, Claire was going on a very long rant about how Envy deserved to be burned to death by a dragon, but for the sake of younger readers, the details of what she was imagining shall be omitted.

The moment the cell door slammed shut, Ed immediately interrupted her brutal imagination and asked, "Claire?" His mouth was uncouthly gaping at her sudden appearance… and probably also due to the fact that she was sprawled on the floor in a most misshapen way.

She glared at him quite icily. She was _not_ in a good mood. Pursing her lips though, she resolved to calm down. "…Yes?" she asked after a moment, sitting up and brushing herself off.

"What the hell are you doing here?" he scowled. A mixture of surprise and anger filled his voice.

"Hmph," Claire pouted. She had already calmed down quite a bit, but she didn't particularly want to answer his questions in her current mood. "You could at least sound happier to see me after all this time."

"That's not the freaking problem!" Ed shouted as anger contorted his face. "The last time I saw you was before I left Resembool three years ago, and now you suddenly pop up in a jail cell in Liore!"

"Fullmetal Alchemist Edward Elric," Claire began, crossing her arms over her chest, "who do you think picked up a lead on the Philosopher's Stone way out here in the first place?"

"…Huh?" Ed asked, thinking for a moment. Her statement had thrown him off. "Probably that agent that that bastard Colonel lost contact with out here."

"Naturally," Claire agreed, nodding in approval. Who else would have found such a priceless lead?

"Come to think of it, I still haven't found out what happened to him," Ed grumbled.

"Yes you have," Claire objected. "You're staring right at the super beautiful Military Investigator Claire-sama."

Ed paused for a moment, his eyes widening with… was that fury? He didn't seem to be in favor of Claire's decision. "What the hell?" he exclaimed again. "Why are you working for the military?"

Claire glared at him, but she decided to let his rudeness slide just this once. "Tsk, tsk ," Claire scolded stubbornly. "That's confidential, and last time I checked, I wasn't obliged to reveal it to you."

"…Whatever," Ed said moodily.

"In any case," Claire said, deciding it was time for a change of subject, "How are we going to get out of here?"

At this, Ed grinned. "Don't worry about that. I've got a plan."

"Oh?" Claire asked. Perhaps Ed and Al were better knights than she thought.

Just when she was about to ask Ed about the details of his apparent plan, the lock of the cell door clicked and Cornello-sama walked in… smiling. Damn, now that she thought about it, that was one hell of a creepy smile.

Pretending she was afraid of the High Priest, Claire backed away from him towards the wall Ed was chained to. She wasn't entirely sure how a battle could break out between the two of them, but if it did, she certainly didn't want to end up being the High Priest's hostage. She also didn't know whether or not Envy had told Cornello-sama that she had been listening in on him… but he had seemed surprised to see her, so perhaps Envy hadn't said anything.

"Your fraud will go public soon," Ed stated calmly to him before the priest had any chance to ask about why Claire was in the cell. Ed certainly seemed quite confident…

"The believers cannot tell the differences between alchemy and miracles," Cornello-sama replied. "No, alchemy and miracles are the same to them, and it makes them happy…"

"Yeah?" Ed asked smugly. "And how does this benefit you?"

Cornello-sama chuckled evilly, but Claire wasn't listening to him anymore. He seemed to be a very stereotypically crooked and greedy man, and that kind of guy didn't interest her. Ed was here to remember Cornello-sama's motives, so she didn't have to worry about catching those either. She knew what they were for the most part anyways though.

So in the mean time, she was much more curious about what Ed was up to. While Cornello-sama and Ed talked, Claire looked around the room, hoping to find some evidence of Ed's plan.

And Claire found exactly what she was looking for behind Ed's back: a microphone.

_My, my_, she thought to herself, _Ed was more creative than I gave him credit for. Now time to put my acting skills into play._

"So you were after money after all," Ed said.

"I can get as much money as I want through the donations from my followers," Cornello-sama explained. "What I want are believers who are willing to sacrifice their lives for me. They believe that I can resurrect people, so they don't fear death."

"Cornello-sama!" Claire wailed, fake tears welling up in her eyes. Ed looked at her awkwardly, probably trying to figure out what this sudden outburst was for. "How could you? You were our hope!"

The High Priest turned his attention to her. "You don't think you could ever stop my plans do you?" he laughed maniacally. "I'll just get rid of you before you can even start trying! No one will ever question me if I tell them you simply left."

And so Claire proceeded to cry her eyes out.

"Eventually, my believers will become the ultimate army!" Cornello-continued his previous explanation of his overly ambitious plans for the future. "Just watch! I will begin subjugating this country in a few years!"

"I don't care about that," Ed said, completely unimpressed. Out of the corner of her eye, Claire noted that he had taken his hands out of the handcuffs. She continued to cry, but she was curious to see how long it would take Cornello-sama to notice that Ed was no longer chained to the wall. Or that he wasn't chained to the wall to begin with.

"What?"

"You can't actually revive anyone right?"

"Of course!" Cornello-sama agreed confidently. "Even if you try to perform human transmutation using the Philosopher's Stone, the outcome is unpredictable! Why should I make the risk for a believer…" his voice trailed off as Ed munched on some bread.

_Ah, he finally noticed Ed's lack of handcuffs_, Claire observed as Ed grinned mischievously from ear to ear. Then, Ed moved aside to reveal the microphone he had been hiding behind his back.

Claire couldn't help but sincerely wish she had a camera upon seeing the look on the High Priest's face as he exclaimed, "WHAAAT? How… how long has that microphone been on?"

"Ever since you came here," Ed replied simply.

"How did you get my broadcasting equipment?"

"My little brother did it. Oh, the one who got caught yesterday was just some junk I transmuted to look like him."

"No… Those are all lies!" Cornello-sama shouted, now talking to his followers instead of Ed. "Do not believe him!" A red light was glowing behind his back.

He was transmuting a… machine gun? Ah yes, a machine gun.

…(She thought about that for a moment).

…_A MACHINE GUN?_ Claire's mind screamed. _I CAN'T DODGE THAT MANY BULLETS! OH-MY-GOD-EDWARD-ELRIC-YOU-BETTER-START-SAVING-ME-RIGHT-NOW!_

Luckily for her, those first bullets were aimed at Ed and the microphone instead of her, and Ed quickly chopped Cornello-sama's brand new machine gun in half before he got a chance to start firing at her.

"Didn't I tell you?" Ed said. "You're inferior to us."

Cornello-sama, letting his machine gun clatter to the floor, fled like a wild animal.

(Claire, meanwhile, was thinking something along the lines of, _Oh_ _my god I thought I was gonna die…_)

* * *

><p>Leaving Claire behind in the jail cell, Ed chased after the fraudulent priest. He definitely wanted to know more about what happened between Point A (three years ago in Resembool) and Point B (a few minutes ago in the jail cell), but that was secondary at the moment. The Philosopher's Stone was right within his reach.<p>

Ahead of him, Ed saw Cornello stop running, faced by a shocked crowd of Liorian citizens. Ed wondered how Cornello would deal with them, but his question was answered immediately.

"High Priest!" a dark-skinned follower demanded. "Was that broadcast true?"

"I don't know what that heretic broadcast using my voice," he answered, "but it is all a conspiracy."

_Seriously, who would be stupid enough to believe that?_ Ed thought irritably. That priest was so annoying.

"To prove it," Cornello continued, "I will eliminate the heretic using the power of God!"

_Wow, is he really still trying to claim that the Philosopher's Stone was the power of God?_ Ed wondered and found himself seriously wantingto face-palm. _This man is utterly hopeless._

"Behold," Cornello said, gesturing overdramatically and raising his Philosopher's Stone into the air, "the power of God!"

Flashing with red electricity for but a moment, the statues of Leto around the crowd of people began to move.

"It's a miracle!" the people cried. "The statues of Leto are moving!"

While the people were distracted by Cornello's deceitful miracle, Ed told Cornello, "Just give it up."

"Heh," Cornello said, waving Ed's pocket watch in front of him. "Without this, all you can do is transmute your auto-mail."

"Old man," Ed said, clapping his hands together to begin his transmutation, "I'll show you the real wrath of God!"

Blue electric bolts danced across the ground and into the Church, eventually reaching the statue of Leto inside. Transmuting the materials around it, Ed turned the large statue of Leto into a mega-sized statue of Leto that was tall enough to destroy the Church's roof. The statue towered over them, blocking the sun that had previously been shining upon them.

"This can't be…" Cornello said in disbelief. "I couldn't move such a large object even with the Philosopher's Stone…"

Then, Cornello looked up and screamed as a fist twice the size of him came towards him.

_Crash!_

The ground shook as the fist smashed the ground just inches in front of him. Cornello's knees gave way and he fell to the ground.

In the clouds of unsettled dust around them, Ed stood over Cornello.

"I – I'm not going to…" he stuttered, trying to run away from Ed again. "I'm not going to hand over the Philosopher's Stone!"

_Tch_, Ed thought. There already wasn't anywhere for him to run. Ed didn't even bother to chase after him this time, but it wasn't long though before Cornello collapsed to the ground, groaning in pain. Machines protruded from Cornello's grotesquely pulsing arm, and Ed swore under his breath.

"A rebound?" Ed hissed. He ran over to Cornello to see exactly what happened, but as soon as he reached the crumpled man with the mutated arm, the red stone shattered.

"…A fake?" Ed asked. Dammit… and he thought they would finally be able to get their bodies back… "You caused all this trouble… made us go through all that hard work… and it was a fake? You've got to be joking!" Ed let out a bellow of frustration.

…_And now I'm back to square one. Goddammit._ Ed let out a long stream of curse words beneath his breath. Then he heard someone clapping, and looked over to see Claire.

"Whoa," she said, looking amazed. "You're stronger than I thought."

Ed just glared at her before turning away. He was leaving. Now.

* * *

><p>"Nii-san!" Al exclaimed upon seeing Ed. He paused for a moment. "…Claire?" he asked, mirroring Ed's reaction.<p>

"Hi-hi," she greeted, waving to him. She and Ed had managed to escape the anarchy near the church with little incident, and now they were standing on one of the only bridges in Liore. Since she had packed everything up and grabbed her bags before going to see Cornello-sama with Roze, she could leave at any time. "How've you been?"

"Good, thank you," Al said politely. "But why are you with Nii-san?"

"Ran into him while on the job."

"Huh?"

"Apparently since we last saw her, she started working as an investigator for the military or something," Ed said irritably. Claire decided to ignore the sarcastic tone in his voice. He didn't sound particularly pleased with the fact that she was part of the military.

"Oh, is that so…?" Al asked, seeming slightly puzzled. "Well, it's nice to see you."

"It's really nice to see you too!" Claire exclaimed happily. A man should know never to ask a lady too many questions. He certainly knew how to treat a lady. "Your older brother ought to be more polite like you."

"Ahahaha… you think so?"

"Oh yes," Claire said. "He didn't seem glad to see me at all."

"Nii-san!" Al scolded. "That's not how you should act after seeing a friend for the first time in three years!"

"HEY! How am I supposed to react when she just randomly appears out of nowhere?" Ed objected loudly. "She wouldn't even explain why she joined the military! It was probably just some crazy idea she came up with!"

_Oh. So he was going to be like that, eh?_

"Ed," Claire said, smiling. "You sure you wanna talk about me that way?"

Ed must have sensed something dangerous coming his way because he didn't say anything.

"Let me tell you something," Claire continued, smile still plastered across her face. "I know all the little details about every mission you've completed since you've joined the military. I know that you transmuted a shower of flower petals without a transmutation circle in order to pass the alchemy exam, and I know that you saved Win-chan from Barry the Chopper shortly thereafter. I know that you've been running around for the past three years searching for clues on the Philosopher's Stone in order to restore your bodies. I could call Win-chan up at any time and tell her just how badly you've been battering up your automail. Would you like me to continue?"

"Err… No."

A voice as sickeningly sweet as too much frosting on a birthday cake spoke cooed in response, "Good."

After that, they were quiet for awhile, as Al digested what he'd just heard, Ed grumbled that Claire shouldn't withhold details, and Claire thought about the success of her acting and how the people of Liore still didn't know that she was with the military.

Claire stood next to Ed and Al who were on the bridge's railing, and the sun was beating down on them. Although a cool breeze was sweeping through the city, it didn't help all that much. Claire could still hear the gentle gurgle of the river water below the bridge, but without Cornello-sama's miracles to sustain it, it would probably dry up soon. She had told so many lies here, but Claire still hoped that the people of Liore would somehow manage without their religion… especially Roze.

"We went through all that for nothing…" Ed said dejectedly, breaking the silence. He stared at his silver pocket watch, glinting in the harsh sun.

"I thought I could finally return you to your real body," Ed continued, talking to Al.

"You should think of yourself first, Nii-san," Al said. "Auto-mail has its troubles after all."

"Alright," Ed said. "I guess it's time to look for our next clue."

"So you guys are leaving already then?" Claire asked. That was certainly a short reunion.

"Ah, yeah…" Al said, but Claire saw him glance sideways. Following his gaze, she noticed Roze standing next to them.

"What have you done…?" Roze asked, her voice laced with pain, grudges, hurt. "The Head Priest's miracles… they represented hope for us. If we believed, the dead would come back to life. That was our only hope!"

Claire glanced towards the ground, knowing the truth of Roze's words. She wasn't used to dealing with situations like this. Her job was only to check out the situation, not to deal with it, so she almost never had to face any of the consequences. She almost found herself uttering an apology to her; Roze had trusted her like a friend. And Roze… still knew only lies about her.

"So you're saying that we should have left it like it was?" Ed asked her.

"What… what will be my reason to live starting tomorrow?" Roze demanded bitterly.

Claire winced at the despair in Roze's voice and wished that Roze hadn't found out the truth of Cain's death. The truth was too cruel, and it wasn't like she could blame Roze's grief entirely on Ed and Al. But in the end, it was all just equivalent exchange: information for ignorance.

"Tell me!"

Ed turned away from her and said, "Think about it on your own. Stand up and walk forward… At least you have two strong legs to take you there."

Roze let her legs collapse beneath her. As Ed and Al walked away, Roze was nothing more than a broken doll whose only choice was to fix herself.

Averting her gaze from Roze, Claire supposed it would be a good time for her to leave as well. Even though her destination wasn't the same as Ed and Al's, there was no point in her staying around. There wasn't anything she could do for the girl, and she'd just feel like a hypocrite. Claire turned to follow Ed and Al.

"Bye bye."

* * *

><p>Roze stayed on that bridge for quite some time even after Claire left. The sun gradually dipped in the sky, and the purples and pinks of dusk began to dot the horizon. She didn't know what to do with herself anymore; she wished she could just disappear.<p>

"_I'll always be here, stuck around this dinghy old place."_

…_Stupid Cain_, Roze thought as warm tears rolled down her cheeks. He shouldn't have made a promise he couldn't keep.

He was already gone.

And he was never coming back.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's note<strong>: This chapter turned out to be a lot longer than I expected it to be... Sorry 'bout that. I wanted to conclude the arc though.

I added the detail about Cornello causing Cain's death, so don't think that's canon.

Anyways, after this my updates will be more sporadic. School is starting, and I also have a lot of other stuff going on, so it will be difficult for me to have time to write my chapters.  
>(...If I don't update for awhile, you can probably blame this on the fact that I have been too distracted by my artwork.)<p>

And on that note, I drew a picture of Envy ;D There's a link on my profile~

**How was my portrayal of Envy? **(don't shoot me for making him heartless T-T) **Was he in-character?**  
><strong>And what do you think of Claire? How did you like her reactions in this chapter?<strong>

**Was there anything you particularly liked/disliked about the way I wrote this arc?**

Hope you enjoyed the chapter xD Review please~


	6. Xenotime 1: A Forest Fairy and a Tall Ed

Disclaimer: FMA belongs to Arakawa Hiromu

Several things to note: In the 2003 anime, Xenotime occurs shortly after Ed becomes a State Alchemist, but in my story it's going to occur after Liore. I don't know if it's canon or not, but I have also decided that Verucio and Elisa shall be related due to the fact that she seems to spend just as much, if not more, time with Verucio than her own father. Also, at some point in this chapter, Claire refers to Hughes as "Maes-san". There's a reason for that, but it will be explained (or at least hinted at...) later.

* * *

><p><em>Recap: Roze and Claire were listening in on Cornello when they overheard that Cornello was the one who killed Cain. Roze fled, and Claire was knocked out by Envy and thrown into the dungeon with Ed. Ed was surprised to see Claire and angry with her for having joined the military. After exposing Cornello's fraud, Ed and Al leave Liore to go to Youswell. Claire, on the other hand, leaves for Xenotime.<em>

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 6 ~ A Magical Forest Fairy and a Very Tall Ed<strong>

The car that carried Lyra in the direction of Dublith bounced horridly on the bumpy dirt road. Although Lyra normally didn't make too big of a deal over such things, she was already in a bad mood from the events at Youswell. She had acted with the military, side of justice, and yet it had somehow turned against her. She couldn't understand that alchemist, the one known as Fullmetal.

Upon her study of alchemy, Lyra had come upon the basic principle of Darwinism: eat or be eaten. The strong eat the weak.

At first glance, it would appear as if it didn't apply to the human species.

But it did.

Not, perhaps, literally, but in the form of beliefs. When two countries waged war, both believed that they were fighting for the side of justice. Who was it, then, that was truly fighting for justice?

Maybe it seemed that the answer would be, "both".

Wrong.

The weaker succumbed to the stronger. The ideals of the weak were forgotten or simply remembered as foolish. Whatever their cause may have been, they were the bad guys.

In the end, it was power that drew the line between right and wrong. It was power that kept law and order. The military had power over the country, so they were the ones who were right. Even if the military's actions at first seemed misguided, they were what was right.

It was her dream to become an alchemist who served the state – an alchemist who upheld law and order.

Edward Elric was a state alchemist.

Why was he going against the military?

* * *

><p>When Claire finally managed to contact a not-very-happy Mustang to give him a much belated report, she didn't tell him about Envy and company. She wanted to investigate more about them before mentioning anything about them to the military.<p>

She didn't know about the other ones, but there was definitely something strange about Envy. Claire had most certainly read enough about alchemy to know that transforming one's body the way he did wasn't some weird transmutation. People didn't just start glowing with white light and look like someone else. It just didn't make any sense, unless he was like… a magical forest fairy creature or something.

Well, that certainly did explain the green hair and the white glow, but somehow she didn't think that theory was very plausible.

And thus, she was left with the question: How could a human transform himself like that?

On the other hand, she could easily tell that they were the ones moving the chess pieces in Liore, the masterminds. They had been the ones to give the fake Philosopher's Stone to Cornello-sama… Claire wondered where they had got such a thing. They were clearly important, and yet, with all the digging around she'd already done for the military, she'd never heard of them before.

Which meant that it was highly possible that any information on them was highly classified.

And if the information was highly classified, then the military would probably obstruct her from investigating further. That wouldn't be any good. The military wasn't using her; she was using the military.

Claire sighed as she opened her notebook to the page she'd bookmarked as "Xenotime." Over the past few years, she'd come to the conclusion that carrying a notebook around was extremely helpful in managing information… although she did have to be careful what she wrote in it. She didn't want it to cause her any particularly large problems if someone found it, so she simply didn't write any confidential data in it.

Xenotime happened to be the destination of her next assignment. A once-prosperous city that used to mine a lot of gold, Xenotime was now just a desolate mining town. From what Mustang had told her, there were rumors about the Philosopher's Stone and the Elric brothers there. Although she supposed it was possible that the Philosopher's Stone could be there, it hardly made sense that the Elrics could be there, considering that they had just been in Liore. As such, her new job was to check out what these fraudulent Elrics were up to.

But you know what was absolutely dreadful? Colonel Mustang had made her _walk _all the way out of the desert near Liore. Apparently, he wanted her to start moving in the direction of Xenotime immediately, and so she had to leave that very day that Ed and Al had proved Cornello-sama's fraud. The problem with that being that she agreed to moving out that very day before she realized that, since everyone was so busy fussing over the fraud of Cornello-sama, there weren't trains operating. No one was driving out of Liore either.

(Well, perhaps it was partially her fault for also wanting to get out of Liore quickly and therefore not considering the current situation, but...)

Seriously, he was endangering her health, exposing her to all that heat! What if she got lost and died of dehydration? Well, she wasn't stupid enough to get lost, but still! The next time he was going to send her to a remote desert city with no forms of transportation leading to it, he was going to transmute a pumpkin into a carriage for her.

What? That defied the principle of equivalent exchange?

_Well_, Claire thought stubbornly as she walked into Xenotime, _that was just too bad for him_. She said he was going to do it, so he was going to do it.

Shoving her notebook back into her bag, Claire decided to examine the town. She couldn't help but think the worn dirt paths and stone buildings were a bit old-fashioned, but she liked them that way. Like Liore, it seemed like one of those towns where everyone knew each other, so she suspected people would quickly notice that she was new in the area. She had passed a few people on the way into town, but looking around, Claire found it rather odd that she hadn't seen many kids around. Since it was still early evening, she would have thought that there would be some boys playing a ball game or something. Perhaps there hadn't been a lot of births in this town in the past few years…? That would explain the lack of children.

Claire had to take out her glasses to get a good view of it, but the most eye catching building in the town was the ornate mansion resting on the mountainside above the town. Isolated from the rest of the town with only a single path leading towards it, it was like a majestic castle watching over its domain. Although princes probably didn't live there, Claire found herself slightly intrigued by the mansion's presence. Surrounded by trees, the mansion was rather isolated, so if you wanted to do something fishy, that was definitely the place to do it. Claire wondered if that mansion would hold any importance to her investigation.

Well, before she worried about that mansion though, the first thing she had to do was find a place to stay… She did have a map of Xenotime with restaurants, inns, and other such stuff labeled on it, but it appeared to be rather outdated. Just a few minutes earlier she had walked past a restaurant called "McBurger." Or at least that's what it said on her map.

The reality being that "McBurger" was now a field of flowers.

_I won't let an outdated map stop me though!_ Claire decided optimistically before trashing the map in the nearest garbage can. And with that, she decided to knock on the door of the nearest building she saw. People surely wouldn't mind giving her directions to the nearest inn, right?

The nearest building Claire saw happened to be a quaint house, enclosed by a brick wall. It was cute, in a way, with a few small trees and bushes growing in front of it and then a full forest behind. Although the images were slightly blurred from her current location, she could see yellow splotches on the trees, which she deduced to be lemons from the tangy essence of lemons wafting from the house. That, along with the enticing smell of freshly baked pastries, was definitely making Claire's mouth water._ So this is how those kids called Hansel and Gretel felt when they saw that candy house, _Claire thought hungrily.

She did, however, decide that it was safe to assume that knocking on the door would not result in meeting a creepy old witch. Almost instantly, she found herself imagining a horrid looking woman, the oldest she had ever seen. One with sagging wrinkles on her face that made her look like goopy mud and a crooked, warty nose. One with scraggly white hair that looked as if it could fall out any moment and a wretched sneer that would laugh at you behind your back. One with beady, crow-like black eyes and a cacophonous voice that sounded like a creaking door with hinges in need of oiling.

_But what if… what if I do meet one?_ Claire's mind nagged and she felt a shiver go up her spine. _This is why I hate knocking on strangers' doors… _She decided that if a creepy old woman greeted the door, she was going to run like hell in the other direction as she tentatively approached the door.

She reached up and let her hand rap on the door.

_Knock, knock._

Some clanking metal suggested cooking equipment being put down before somewhat heavy footsteps approached the door.

_Please let it not be a creepy old witch_, she prayed, suddenly hoping that Leto actually existed. Please let it be a normal person. _Please let it be a normal person who isn't secretly a magical forest fairy. Please let it be a normal person…_

The door opened to reveal a tall man with tanned skin and dark brown, wavy hair falling across one side of his face. He wore simple attire – a white shirt under a vest that was just slightly lighter colored than his hair. His hands were covered in a light layer of white dust… probably flour. Although Claire couldn't say for sure, he looked as if he was about forty years old. Her quick assessment of him was that he didn't pose any threat.

"Ah, hello," the man said, seemingly slightly surprised that he had a visitor. "Is there something you want…?"

Claire laughed nervously, grateful that he appeared to be a normal human being. "Oh umm," she began. "I'm not from around here. Do you know where I can find an inn to stay at?" Of course, Envy probably could have transformed himself to be this guy as well, but Claire convinced herself he wasn't _that_ much of a stalker. Hopefully.

"An inn?" he asked.

"Yeah."

"You're a traveler then?"

"Yup."

The man sighed. "The inns in this town all went out of business a few years ago when the gold dried up."

…_Ugh, that's not good_, Claire thought. Camping outside was _not_ a hobby of hers when she could be sleeping in a nice, warm bed with room service. Quickly revising her plans, she decided to take a different approach. Since he seemed like a normal human being, she would take advantage of that. "But then…" she said forlornly, "where can I stay?"

"Well…" the man started, but she didn't let him finish.

"I can't possibly sleep outside!" she continued dramatically. A troubled expression enhanced the pitiful appearance she was attempting to portray. "What if it rained? That would be dreadful! I could get hypothermia…"

Claire glanced towards the man and noticed that his stoic expression hadn't changed in the least. She genuinely started to worry that this man might be heartless enough to let her sleep outside.

Although the man's expression remained static, he spoke. "If you have no place to stay," he stated matter-of-factly, "you can stay at my place."

"…Really? Thank you so much!" Claire said visibly relieved, but immediately realized she had perked up a little too quickly when the man raised an eyebrow at her. She took note that the next time she performed this act, she should pretend to feel guilty about accepting such an offer.

The man didn't say anything after that and simply walked back into his house, expecting her to follow him. It had been easy enough to convince him to let her stay at his house (which she found slightly odd), but she decided that the chances that this man was a psychotic killer were much less than the chances of rain. _Being in the military is making me paranoid_, Claire decided. She was, however, grateful that she now had a place to stay.

Following the man into the house, the first thing Claire took note of was the fact that she was definitely going to smell like lemons tomorrow. The citrusy scent was overwhelming, and she couldn't help but wonder how the man could stand it. He must have been used to it… Did his house always smell this strong?

Other than that, the house was plain – so plain, in fact, you might have thought he was planning to move out of his house and had already had most of his furniture shipped. The house was spacious and bare, with only a single sofa and a table in the living room. Warm, colorful light from the dusk sunset illuminated the house, preventing the cold brick walls from giving the house a creepy atmosphere. Save for the creaky floorboards, the house seemed eerily quiet until…

"Uncle Verucio!" a little girl called as she playfully bounded down a flight of stairs. She had short brown hair and a childish grin on her face. "Are you trying to bake another lemon pi-" she began, before noticing Claire. "I've never seen you around before… what's your name?"

"I'm Claire!" Claire answered greeting the little girl with a friendly wave.

"My name's Elisa," the little girl explained, waving back.

"There are no inns around here, so I'm going to let Claire stay here for awhile," Verucio told Elisa. Claire noted that the man always spoke very bluntly and rarely said anything more than what was necessary.

"Really?" Elisa-chan asked hopefully. "I guess I'll be seeing you a lot then, Claire-nee!"

"Yup," Claire smiled. Elisa-chan was such a cute kid.

"By the way, Uncle Verucio, I'm gonna go home now," the little girl said. "I'm hungry for dinner."

"Alright."

"Claire-nee, have you eaten dinner yet?"

"Umm, no," Claire said, not sure why Elisa-chan was asking her that. She did need to eat soon though…

"Want to come eat at my place?" she asked as she picked up her shoes from the front entrance and slid her feet into them. "Uncle Verucio's not a very good cook. He keeps trying to make lemon pies like my dad's though."

Claire glanced back towards the man to see his reaction to this comment. Verucio-san looked just slightly embarrassed, but he wasn't angry or anything. _Despite my paranoia_, Claire concluded, _he seems like a pretty nice guy._

"...Her father's lemon pies are the best," Verucio-san said. "He might make one for you if you ask."

"Alright, I'd be glad to eat at your place then, Elisa-chan." Claire smiled at the little girl, grateful for being saved from eating bad cooking.

Elisa-chan grabbed Claire's wrist. "Let's go then!"

And off they went.

* * *

><p><strong>A week later…<strong>

As it turned out, Elisa-chan's family owned a restaurant that all the local miners liked to visit, making it the perfect place to eavesdrop in order to gather information discreetly. Although Verucio-san apparently didn't get along with his younger brother (Elisa-chan's father) very well, Elisa-chan's father was more than willing to let her eat dinner with them for free. After the first few days of eating for free though, Claire decided that since she had the money to pay, she really ought to. She actually did get a pretty big paycheck from the military, and everyone in town seemed as if they could use some money. Freeloading was no good.

Claire lay down on the make-shift that Verucio-san was letting her borrow. The bed wasn't the softest she'd ever lain on as it was only made up of a few sheets and a pillow, but it was warm and comfortable. With her amber eyes, she examined the ceiling with boredom. Her straight, dark brown hair splayed out across the mattress, and she twirled it around her finger as she let her thoughts wander.

A little while ago though, she had run into the "Elric brothers". _An interesting pair_, she thought to herself. Apparently, they were working together with Magwar-sama, the owner of the castle-like mansion, to make the Philosopher's Stone. The townspeople loved them for all that the two brothers had done for them. Well, even with all their good deed, Claire still wouldn't rule out the possibility of the fakes being bad though.

She had met the two brothers for the first time the other day when she went out to pick up medicine for Elisa-chan. Although Claire still hadn't found a good moment to ask what exactly Elisa-chan was sick with, she had noticed that the little girl would often start coughing painfully without warning.

Claire sighed as she walked into the small local pharmacy. A mild hospital-like smell filled the air, probably from all the chemicals and medicine that were kept there. Several elderly and middle-aged people sat on rickety wooden benches painted a dull teal, a few of whom were wearing face masks or coughing like Elisa-chan. Claire supposed that they were waiting for the small woman wearing a white lab coat behind the counter to get them their prescriptions and walked up to the counter.

"Umm… hello?" Claire asked, trying to get the woman's attention. She was rummaging around through some shelves looking for something.

Turning her head to look at Claire, the woman said, "You must be the new face in the area that's living with Verucio." She smiled warmly. "What do you need?"

"I'm here to get Elisa-chan's medicine," Claire explained, reaching into her pocket and pulling out an envelope. "Verucio-san told me that this would be enough to pay for it."

"Alright," the woman said and took the envelope from Claire before turning towards her cabinets and shelves once more. "You can sit down while you wait if you want. I need to find some of the other customers' medicine first."

"Haha, standing is alright with me," Claire said lightheartedly as she decided that this was a good chance to find out some information. "What exactly is Elisa-chan's illness? It's terrible that she's already got such an illness at her age."

"Winston, your medicine is ready!" the woman called out as she scribbled something down on a piece of paper. "Well, as for Elisa-chan…"

The man called Winston took his bag of medicine, thanked the woman, and walked out.

"…Elisa-chan was one of the very few survivors of an epidemic that claimed the lives of many newborns," the woman continued as she turned her back towards Claire once more. She was back to digging through her cabinets. "What happened was truly tragic. The medicine that's prescribed for it can temporarily stop the illness from getting worse, but it can't cure it."

_Well, that explains the lack of children playing outside_, Claire thought. "Is it incurable then?" she asked, finding herself to be slightly worried. Although she had previously been asking just out of need to find out information, she asked this question because she genuinely wanted to know if Elisa-chan would be alright. It wasn't uncommon for the contraction of an incurable illness to lead to death…

"Hmm…" the woman said thoughtfully. She pulled a container out of her cabinets, as well as a tiny bottle. Placing a label on the tiny bottle, she put a certain number of pills into it from the larger container. "I don't know. There was one man who could cure it, but no one was able to figure out how he was able to."

"Eh? What do you mean?"

"Dr. Marcoh used a strange light, and the illness was cured," the woman explained, placing the new bottle of pills on the counter. "That was how Elisa-chan managed to survive that epidemic in the first place. She came down with that illness again though, soon after he left… Elliot, come get your prescription!"

The man named Elliot followed the same procedure as the man called Winston as Claire wondered, _Dr. Marcoh…?_ He seemed intriguing; she wanted to know more about him. And if he was able to cure an incurable illness… why hadn't she heard of him before? It was odd that the military didn't know about him.

"Hmm… he didn't use any sort of medicine or anything?" Claire asked the woman, just to make sure. It was odd that light could cure an illness… that didn't make sense.

"Nope," the woman said, shaking her head and then turning back to her shelves to grab a bottle and place it in a paper bag. "That's why we still can't figure out how he was doing it. He was truly a miracle-maker, that man. It's too bad he left."

_A miracle-maker…_ Something clicked in Claire's head._ Had Dr. Marcoh been using a fake (or perhaps real) Philosopher's Stone, like Cornello-sama?_

"I see…" Claire said, now craving more information on Dr. Marcoh.

But just as she was about to ask another question, the woman handed Claire the paper bag. "Now here's Elisa-chan's medicine," she said. "Make sure you get it to her."

…And that marked a definite end to their conversation because it would most certainly be awkward to push it further. "I will!" Claire said, smiling in order to not let on her disappointment at being unable to ask any more questions.

"See you another time then."

"Bye bye!" she said and waved taking her leave.

It was right when Claire walked out of the pharmacy that she met the fake Elrics, who she was quick to dub "Tall Ed" and "Little Al". For some reason, a lot of people had crowded in one area of the street near the pharmacy like bees to honey, jabbering away to one another with "ooohs" and "aaahs" of amazement. In all honesty, it looked as if some celebrity had walked into town.

The only person who hadn't joined that crowd was a little boy who was swinging his feet back and forth on a nearby bench. The boy had slightly messy blonde hair and wore a forest green headband with earflaps. His gray-blue eyes watched the mingling crowd, but it didn't really seem as if it was out of curiosity. Claire estimated that the boy was around eleven, and she approached him.

"Hey," she greeted.

Turning his attention towards her, he tentatively said, "Umm… hi."

"I'm Claire," she said, smiling. She decided it was better to introduce herself; perhaps that would make the child more amicable. She reached her hand out so as to shake his. "I'm kinda new around here."

Looking slightly embarrassed, the boy took her hand and shook it. "I'm Al," he explained. "Alphonse Elric."

"Really?" Claire asked excitedly. _So this is the younger of the fake Elrics? _she wondered. _He looks nothing like the real thing… but his personality certainly matches._ "Alphonse Elric as in the brother of the Fullmetal Alchemist?"

"…Yeah," the boy said nervously, staring at his hands in his lap. He didn't seem particularly comfortable with lying. Or perhaps he was trying to throw her off with innocence? Claire watched him quizzically.

"So what's going on over there?" she decided to ask, gesturing towards the crowd. Asking too many questions about him and his brother all at once would be suspicious.

"Nii-san is helping some people fix broken things with alchemy," the boy said, more confident this time. Claire came to the conclusion that the boy admired his older brother.

"I have heard that Fullmetal Alchemist Edward Elric always sides with the public. I guess that's true."

"Yeah."

"Al," the voice of an older boy said causing Claire and the fake Al to look towards its speaker.

"Nii-san!" the boy exclaimed as his brother casually strolled in their direction.

Taking one look at the fake Ed, Claire felt a slight grin of amusement on her face. _Oh my_, she thought. Tall Ed had blond hair like the real Ed, but it was much shorter. The manner in which it was parted to one side gave him a rather suave look, and he carried himself with an air of importance. He looked a bit like this one man on a wanted poster from an ocean-bordering country – a pirate called Sanji, if she remembered correctly. The only differences were that his hair was parted on the opposite side, and he lacked the curly eyebrow.

But the aspect of him that she found so amusing was none of these things.

"Who might you be?" Tall Ed asked, turning towards her.

"I'm Claire," she said sweetly, and then, because she found it absolutely irresistible to say so, she added, "You sure are tall!"

"Haha, you think so?" he asked, flashing her an absolutely splendid smile as he just slightly pushed his hair from his face. "I'm Edward, by the way. Pleased to make your acquaintance."

_Oh my god_, Claire thought, _he's so polite! So unlike the real thing! He's like… a walking, talking, breathing Prince Charming!_ Pretending to be an awful lot more reserved than she was as well as slightly flattered, Claire said, "Pleased to make your acquaintance as well."

"Well, we must be off then," Tall Ed said as he turned to walk away. "I suppose we'll see you later."

"Yup, it was great meeting you," Claire said, waving as Little Al ran after his brother. "Bye bye Edward-san and Alphonse-kun!"

As the fake Elrics went on their way, Claire turned to walk back to Verucio-san's house. She knew who the fake Elrics were – the next step was to find out their motives.

Now, several days later, Claire hadn't managed to get that much farther on her investigation. All she'd really managed to find out was that the fake Elrics were working for Magwar-sama, the owner of the mansion on the hill, and that they were trying to make the Philosopher's Stone. She wondered just what kind of research they were doing for that and if it had yielded any results. Sighing, she let herself curl up on the bed. She'd worry about that later…

For now, she'd sleep.

* * *

><p>It really wasn't long before Claire came across the fake Elric brothers again. In fact, it was just a few days. This time she happened to run into them one day when coming to eat dinner at Elisa-chan's family restaurant.<p>

As usual, the restaurant was filled with big, muscular miners laughing and discussing their days as they ate delicious food. There were, of course, some other customers as well, but most of them were friends of Elisa-chan's family from work. Claire liked the warm atmosphere exuded by the restaurant, the lightheartedness the place seemed to have. Everyone knew everyone. It was a bit disconcerting the first day when everyone had crowded around her to find out who she was, but after that they all just sort of accepted her as part of the group. She did, however, have to give up on getting any information via eavesdropping though. It wasn't particularly hard to notice that the miners were mostly only talking about their families. At first she was annoyed about that, but after a little while, she actually found it rather amusing. It was nice to hear them be so enthusiastic about their family lives; she couldn't help but be reminded of Maes-san.

"Elisa-chan, Claire-chan!" one of the men said. He was still pretty young and handsome, perhaps in his mid-twenties. His slicked back, chestnut-colored hair was his most prominent feature. "How are you both today?"

"Great, Ken-san!" Elisa-chan replied before Claire had a chance to answer. She gave the man one of her toothy grins.

"Haha," he laughed. "Well why don't you go sit with the Elrics?"

"The Elrics are here?" Claire asked, surprised. She immediately began scanning the restaurant. If the fake Elrics were there, it was a perfect chance for her.

"Al-kun and Ed-nii-san?" the little girl asked excitedly.

"Yup!" the man said merrily. "They're over there." He gestured, pointing with his thumb to a table in the back of the restaurant…with none other than the fake Elrics dining at it.

"Yay!" Elisa-chan exclaimed, grabbing Claire's arm. "You don't mind sitting with them right?"

"Nope, of course not!" Claire smiled. "I'd love to sit with them."

Elisa-chan beamed at her before turning to walk towards the fake Elrics' table. "C'mon, Claire-nee!" she exclaimed happily as she pulled Claire along.

Tall Ed was quick to notice them as they approached the table. "Hello again," he said smoothly.

"Why hello!" Claire said, clapping her hands together. She quickly observed that the fake Elrics had just gotten their orders – their plates were barely touched. "How nice it is to see you again."

"Yes, you as well," the blond-haired boy said. "So you're friends with Elisa-chan here?"

"Yup!"

"U-um… Elisa-chan," the very timid voice of Little Al sputtered awkwardly, interrupting Claire and Tall Ed's conversation.

The both of them glanced sideways to see Elisa-chan bear-hugging Little Al. She looked incredibly happy to see the boy; the boy looked incredibly flustered to be hugged in such a way. His face was even slightly red. As Elisa-chan broke the hug, the Little Al stared nervously at the floor. Claire giggled – how adorable.

"Al-kun! I haven't gotten to play with you for awhile," the little girl said somewhat disappointedly. "You should come to play more often."

"I can't; I'm busy," Little Al told her. He still looked somewhat embarrassed, but then he smiled. "We can talk right now though right?"

Elisa-chan grinned and plopped herself down on the seat across from Little Al. It wasn't long before they were engaging in an animated conversation about Elisa-chan's new plant garden. Claire, on the other hand, chose to sit across from the older brother while she pretended to study the menu she had been given at the front door. She debated the best method to approach the topics she wanted to know about while he politely ate his steak.

Just as Little Al was explaining the nutrients plants need to grow well, Claire finally asked Tall Ed, "Is it true that you guys are working for that guy who lives in the mansion?"

"Magwar-sama?" the suave blond asked after he finished chewing. "Yeah, we're working to develop the Philosopher's Stone."

"The Philosopher's Stone? But isn't that just a legend?" Claire questioned, feigning surprise. The real Elrics were after the Stone as well, how could she be surprised?

…_Especially when I am also chasing after it_, a voice whispered in the back of her mind.

"No, I believe it really exists," Tall Ed stated, placing his fork and knife carefully on the side of his plate.

"Really? That's so cool then!"

"You think so?" He flipped his hair and grinned. He had the perfect confidence of a prince. "Thank you."

Just then, Elisa-chan's mother walked over to the table. "Claire-chan, Elisa-chan," she began. "What would you two like?"

"Mama, can I have ham with gravy and buttermilk biscuits? And I want milk."

"Yes, sure honey. What about you, Claire-chan?"

"Umm… I'll have chicken wings with salad. I'm fine with water for my drink."

"Alright, I'll be right back with your food then," she said before turning to walk back towards the kitchen. Normally she stayed and chatted with Elisa-chan for a bit, but today she left quickly. Claire decided that Elisa-chan's mom must like to leave her daughter alone when she was with her friends. She certainly was nice.

Claire returned her attention to Tall Ed. She still hadn't managed to find out anything from him that she didn't already know yet. "How far have you guys gotten with your research?"

"Well, we've managed to make something very similar to the real thing, but it's still not complete."

_Okay_, Claire thought, _that's something. I wonder if I can push him to tell me any more than that_. "What do you mean?" she asked curiously.

"Haha," he laughed airily. "It's rather complicated."

"Ehh?" Claire asked, disappointed. _Does that mean he's just going to leave me hanging here with all this curiosity? _she wondered. "Try me!" she pressed.

"No, no," he said easily. "I wouldn't want to confuse you."

"Boo…" Claire pouted, taking it that that was a polite refusal to tell her any more.

Tall Ed chuckled lightly at her frustration.

_Hmm…_ Claire thought, quite pleased, _he seems relaxed around me. Good. _Just because she couldn't get him to tell her about how far their research was that didn't mean that she couldn't get him to tell her something else. "So… what made you so interested in the Philosopher's Stone anyways?

"Well, you know," the suave blond said, "the legend of wealth behind it and whatnot is certainly quite intriguing, if I do say so myself. But more so than that, I want to help the people in this town."

"How wonderful," Claire said, pretending to sound amazed. That really didn't tell her anything new though… "This is your hometown then, I take it?"

"Actually, it isn't," he told her. Claire watched him curiously, waiting for him to become uncomfortable with all his lies. "I simply wish to see the people here prospering once more."

"Wow," Claire said. "You're really kind, aren't you?"

"I believe in doing my best for the people whenever I can," he said, letting a confident grin slip onto his lips.

"Don't you still have to accomplish your duties for the military though?" Claire asked. "You are a state alchemist after all."

He shrugged calmly. "I'm getting done what I need to get done, so it's alright."

"I see…" Claire said. It was becoming quite clear to her that he didn't have any intentions of revealing anything to her that the townspeople didn't already know. He certainly seemed to be a smooth talker.

"Anyways," Tall Ed said as he folded his hands together on the table, "how did you come to end up in a remote town like this?"

_Shoot_, Claire thought. _I'm supposed to be the one asking questions, not him_. "My parents used to tell me about this place back when it was still doing well," she lied. "I wanted to see what it was like."

"Oh?" the suave blond asked. "That's interesting."

"Yes, it's such a shame that there isn't any gold left…"

"Indeed."

Claire sighed. This was like a conversation between politicians – neither of them was truthfully answering the others' questions. All the crucial information was buried deep within a mountain of lies, and it wasn't possible to dig it up inconspicuously.

"Claire-nee!" Elisa-chan suddenly interrupted. "Guess what?"

"What?" Claire asked, turning her attention towards the little girl.

"Al-kun said he'd give me a plant to take care of the next time he sees me!" she exclaimed happily. Meanwhile, Little Al shifted nervously in his seat.

"Hmm?" An understanding and somewhat arrogant smirk came onto the elder brother's face. He was certainly sharp.

"Really? That's so nice of him." _Even if the older brother is a liar_, Claire thought, _the younger one's innocence seems to be genuine… _

Just then, the restaurant door opened from behind them. Several other customers had already come in after her and Elisa-chan, so she had been planning to ignore it, but the silence of the rest of the people in the restaurant told Claire that she ought to turn around and see who had come in.

"Magwar-sama!" one of the diners exclaimed in surprise.

In the doorway stood a smiling, middle-aged man. A perfectly groomed mustache along with a casual gray suit and a slightly overweight gave him the air of a wealthy, business-oriented man. His face itself had a rather serious expression set upon it, but his genial smile greatly softened it. Tipping his hat slightly and turning towards the man who had exclaimed his name, he said, "Why hello, Stein-san."

_So that's Magwar-sama…?_ Claire wondered.

"To what do we owe your visit, Magwar-sama?" another man asked. Magwar-sama evidently did not come to visit Elisa-chan's house often, but the people certainly seemed honored to see him.

"Haha," the man laughed jovially. "I've simply come here to personally pick up the Elrics."

Claire glanced towards the fake Elrics. Already, Tall Ed had placed some bills on the table and was preparing to leave. Little Al was waiting for his brother, and Elisa-chan was waving bye to him. Claire took their haste to mean that the middle-aged man did not tolerate those who made him wait.

"I'm sorry, but we'll have to take our leave now," the suave blond said to Claire. "See you some other time."

"Bye bye."

"See you later, Al-kun!"

The two boys walked out the door, leaving Claire and Elisa-chan to talk amongst each other. For awhile, the little girl happily babbled about her conversation with Little Al, but soon Elisa-chan's mother brought their food. As she ate, Claire debated her next tactic in information gathering.

_They won't answer my questions truthfully, eh?_

Apparently, civil questioning wasn't quite enough to get this assignment done.

_Well, that certainly makes things quite a bit more interesting._

She'd have to take her investigating a step further.

_For every false answer, there was a lie._

_And for every lie, there was something hidden._

Claire couldn't help but grin in anticipation as to what she'd find out next.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's note:<strong> Sorry for the wait! Hopefully you'll forgive since this is a long (but not particularly interesting...) chapter ;D If I have written anything particularly odd, I shall blame it on the fact that I was rather loony while writing this chapter because I got hit in the face really hard with a soccer ball (lol fail). I'm alright though! xD

I swear that there's a good reason as to why I felt the necessity to put something from Lyra's PoV at the beginning of the chapter, but I can't explain what that reason is yet.

There's a link for another picture of Claire (and also another of Envy) on my profile, if you want to check them out~

**Do you guys like that Claire acts on her own instead of with Ed and Al? Why or why not?**

Thanks for reading! Review~


	7. Xenotime 2: Nothing of the Past

Disclaimer: Fullmetal Alchemist belongs to Arakawa Hiromu.

* * *

><p><em>Recap: Claire arrives in Xenotime, and she manages to get Verucio to let her stay with him. She meets Elisa, and she finds out about her illness. She also runs into the fake Elrics and ends up eating with them and Elisa at Elisa's family restaurant. Claire tries to get Russell to tell her about Magwar's research, but he doesn't tell her anything useful.<em>

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 7 ~ Nothing of the Past<strong>

_Resembool had always been a quiet, uneventful town where anything unexpected rarely occurred. Every day, the farmers worked tirelessly fields. Every day, the children played tag around the lush trees and over the stretching hills and across the small, trickling streambeds. Every day, the birds would chirp a new tune. Resembool was simply a happy rural town._

_Well, at least for the most part._

_Nothing had been quite the same since their mother had died._

_He could feel it, the void in his life where his mother used to be. Every morning, he still thought that perhaps he'd wake up to hear her calling him down to breakfast and this was all really a nightmare._

_But this nightmarish reality – he and Al could fix it. _

_Those had been his thoughts that day. Those had been his thoughts every day since the day their mother had died._

_That day, though, something unexpected happened. A little girl who he had never seen before knocked on the door. She looked to be around Ed's age, with dark brown hair and bright amber eyes. _

"_Umm…" she began. "Is Hohenheim-san home?"_

_That was their first meeting._

* * *

><p>If Claire had known that the real Elrics had arrived in Xenotime just a little bit earlier that night, she wouldn't have come rushing in to check up on Elisa-chan with Verucio-san.<p>

But she didn't know, and she was worried about Elisa-chan, so she did.

"Elisa!" Verucio-san exclaimed frantically as he rushed into their house. His breathing was heavy – he had been gathering lemons when he'd heard about the accident. "Is Elisa alright?"

Claire, on the other hand, casually walked up behind him. While she was also worried about the little girl, she knew how to keep her head in such a situation. Upon hearing that Elisa-chan had been involved in an accident, Verucio-san hadn't even waited around long enough to hear that some travelling alchemist had saved her. Claire assumed that if she had been "saved" then she was probably alright. And if not… arriving there faster wasn't going to change what had already happened.

The second Claire saw who the "travelling alchemist" was though, her composedness gave way to dismay. There they were – Ed and Al, the short one and the big one, sitting at one of the restaurant's tables with a huge plate of chicken in front of them._ I should have known…_ Claire thought grimly, wishing terribly she could make herself invisible. Sadly, everyone had turned to face her and Verucio-san since the little girl's father was now yelling at him… which meant that, yes, the Elrics' eyes were boring right into her in a mixture of confusion and shock, asking her why she was there.

"You're wrong!" Elisa-chan argued against her father's accusation of Verucio-san forcing her to work in the mines. "Uncle Verucio didn't do anything bad! I asked him to let me help-" Suddenly, she broke into a fit of painful coughs, temporarily diverting everyone's attention from Claire and the older man.

"I'm sorry, Elisa," her father said worriedly before grabbing a nearby glass of water. "Drink this."

A motion nearby Claire caught her eye, and she saw Verucio-san stare at the ground, almost ashamed, before placing his basket of freshly picked lemons on the table. The man didn't speak much; it was difficult to tell what was going through his mind. "Sorry," he apologized before turning to leave and walking out the door.

The man had already left before Claire had a chance to follow him, but she decided it would probably be better for her to stick around at this point in order to make sure the Elrics didn't reveal anything about her. Although she didn't think Al would blurt out anything unnecessary, she did think that Ed might. Claire prayed that Elisa-chan and her family would be able to keep Ed's attention for awhile longer.

"Uncle Verucio said that your lemon pie was the best, Dad," Elisa-chan said quietly. "He said that it's a shame there aren't many farms left here."

"But once the Philosopher's Stone is completed, the city will prosper again!" one of the men said enthusiastically. "Once that happens, we can just buy fruits instead of farming them."

"The Philosopher's Stone?" Ed demanded. Suddenly he was incredibly interested. _Well, _Claire thought, _if there's one thing that will make him forget that I'm here, it's that._

"Yes, yes," Elisa-chan's father said. "You two came to help with Magwar-sama's research to create the Philosopher's Stone, right?"

"…Huh?" asked a very confused Ed. He probably didn't have any idea what the man was talking about.

"Alchemist-san, please help us make the Philosopher's Stone," he continued. Claire vaguely wondered of the likeliness of random travelers to help with this research. "We want to regain the city of gold, Xenotime."

"Please, Alchemist-san!" another man begged as the whole crowd of men in the room surrounded Ed and Al. Claire remained by the doorway, finding no reason to get herself caught up in that crowd.

"It seems like things are complicated here," Ed said a bit nervously, "but I guess I'll try meeting that Magwar person first."

"By the way…" one man in the crowd began, "may we hear your names?"

_Oh boy_, Claire thought as she cupped her face in her hand in resignation as to what was to come next, _they dropped the bomb._

"My name?" Ed asked boastfully. "I'm Edward. Edward Elric."

"I'm his little brother, Alphonse," Al said a bit bashfully. "Alphonse Elric."

Quite predictably, the crowd stared at them with open-mouths, processing what they just heard. Claire didn't have to be telepathic to know what they were thinking. She had seen the townspeople's relationship with the fake Elrics firsthand – there was no way the townspeople were going to trust these two newcomers over them.

"The Elric brothers?" a slightly balding man asked, to confirm the group's suspicions. "The State Alchemist?"

"Yeah!" Ed grinned.

And was mercilessly thrown out of the restaurant along with the suit of armor that was his brother.

"What was that for?" Ed objected loudly.

"Shut up!" Elisa-chan's father shouted angrily. "The real Elric brothers are already over there!" He gestured towards Magwar-sama's mansion. "Come again when you feel like telling us your real names!"

"HEY!" Ed shouted back and rudely pointed in Claire's direction. "That girl behind you can vouch for our authenticity!"

"Me?" Claire asked, feigning innocence with a dash of surprise and pretending to not have the slightest idea what Ed was talking about. Once more, everyone was facing her. Well, she did know this was coming, but how dare he get her involved. He was going to pay for that.

"Who else?"

"Hmph. I don't know who you think you're fooling," Claire said as she glared at him. Again, she wore the mask of an actress as she went along with the emotions of the townspeople. "But I don't know you."

And before Ed could object for a second time, the door was slammed in his face.

* * *

><p>Despite the disturbance Ed and Al had caused at Elisa-chan's family restaurant, the early night was tranquil with only a few stars starting to speckle the vast violet sky. As she and Elisa-chan walked down the street, golden lights shone from warm houses, and chirping crickets could be heard in the distance. Every once in awhile, an owl who surely lived in one of the many trees surrounding the town hooted, somewhat disturbing the typical night sounds generated by the crickets. It wasn't yet so dark that it was difficult to see, but the crescent moon had already taken its place above them.<p>

The little girl walking beside her was quiet, probably upset about the way her parents had treated Verucio-san. The moment Claire had announced she was going back to Verucio-san's house, Elisa-chan had immediately announced that she wanted to take Claire there. It had been obvious that her father didn't want her to spend any more time with the man, but Elisa-chan had managed to convince him by telling him that Claire had a bad sense of direction and she still hadn't quite memorized the route to get there. Since Claire figured it really wouldn't do any harm to go along with Elisa-chan's story, she agreed apologetically.

Claire sighed, glancing towards the little girl. Although she didn't hate the silence, it was boring, and she hated being bored.

"I wish Papa and Uncle Verucio would get along," Elisa-chan said quietly as she kicked at pebbles in the road. "It bugs Papa that Uncle Verucio doesn't like Magwar-sama's research."

"Why doesn't he like Magwar-sama's research?" Claire asked. She had been wondering exactly why the two brothers were fighting. "It seems to me as if it will greatly benefit you the town."

"I know, but…" Elisa-chan frowned. "Uncle Verucio thinks Xenotime was better off as a farming town."

"Why's that?"

"He said that our greed is blinding us or something like that. I don't understand what he meant by that though."

"Hmm…"

"But still," Elisa-chan said, changing the subject, "it's not Uncle Verucio's fault that I went to the mines!"

Claire blinked. "It wasn't?"

"No," the little girl told her. "I asked him if I could go to the mines because I wanted to see Papa…"

_Ah_, Claire thought, _he wouldn't tell her "No" if she asked him that way. Despite his seemingly cold nature, that man has a real soft side for kids…_

"I don't want Papa to blame him, but I don't think Papa will listen to me," Elisa-chan continued. She clearly felt bad about worsening the relationship between the men, even if was only accidental.

The fifteen-year-old said nothing, unsure of what to say. She didn't know Elisa-chan's family matters well enough to give her own opinion, but she did want the younger girl to cheer up. _She's a sweet kid_, Claire thought. "You'll just have to wait for them to work out their differences I suppose," she eventually said. Then, changing the topic and ruffling the little girl's hair, she asked, "You and Al-kun seemed to be good friends."

At this, the girl smiled. "Yeah! He's like my brother."

"Haha, really?" Claire asked, somewhat amused as she wondered if Little Al's "like" of Elisa wasn't slightly different than Elisa-chan's "like." Childhood innocence was awfully nice, but very fleeting. _Maybe I can lend Little Al a bit of a hand_, Claire thought. "Want to tell a story while we walk?"

"A story?" the little girl questioned.

"Yup. About a princess and a peasant."

"Who's the princess and who's the peasant?"

"Well, the princess was a cute, brown-haired little girl named Elisa," Claire explained. "She was the beloved princess of a tiny town, and she was nice to everyone."

"I'm the princess?"

"Yup."

"So then who's the peasant?"

"The peasant was a blond-haired boy who loved nature," Claire told her. Elisa-chan was staring at her expectantly, having stopped kicking at the pebbles on the ground. "His dream was to grow a beautiful garden of trees and flowers for the wonderful princess."

The little girl giggled. "Is his name Al?"

"Oh, so you knew?" Claire teased lightly.

Elisa-chan nodded enthusiastically before asking, "So what happened?"

"Well…" Claire began, formulating the story as she went. Although the story wasn't in a whole ton of detail, Claire faked the voice of the kind elderly woman who advised the blond peasant through his trials and pretended to roar like the evil dragon. She played all the characters except for the princess, who she let Elisa-chan herself play. It was a never-ending tale, one where the blond peasant was willing to do anything to procure the plants he wanted to grow in his garden for the princess and the princess would always try to help him in his endeavors whenever she could.

As they walked, the story twisted and turned, the characters' escaping from one plot twist after another until Verucio-san's lonely little house was finally in sight. Deciding that now was a good time to end the story, Claire said, "And then the peasant boy had a garden of all the most beautiful and exotic plants around the world."

"The princess was amazed by the peasant boy," Elisa-chan added. "She had never seen anything so beautiful before!"

"Yes," Claire said. "And then they lived happily ever after."

"The end," Elisa-chan finished as she opened the door to her uncle's house without even bothering to knock. "Uncle Verucio!" she called as she ran inside.

Claire stood outside for a little longer, choosing to lean against the rough brick wall of Verucio-san's house. She didn't want to impose on them while Elisa-chan apologized. Turning her gaze towards the sky, Claire watched the pale moon, mesmerized by its perfectly round shape and creamy glow. Sometimes, she just wanted to reach up to touch it, even though she knew it was farther away than her arm could ever reach.

That story-telling with Elisa-chan though… it sure did bring back memories. _It's been so long since I've told a story like that_, Claire thought as she smiled nostalgically. _The last time was when I still lived with onee-chan…_

_How many years had that been now?_

Claire studied the endless sky as she listened to the muffled voices of Elisa-chan and her uncle. She had been such a rash little kid, and that rashness was what had led her to where she was now. Her thoughts drifted towards her older sister again, but quickly, she shook her head to drive them from her mind. Getting preoccupied by them would do her no good…

Suddenly, Claire's eyes flicked towards the direction of Magwar-sama's mansion, breaking her away from whatever train of thought she hoped to free herself from and alerting her to the bright blue light that had flashed there for just a moment.

_Was that… alchemy?_ Claire's eyes widened in realization. The blue light was already gone. _How dare they go to investigate Magwar-sama's mansion without me._

"Claire-nee, aren't you coming in?" Elisa-chan asked, poking her head out the door. "I'm gonna go back home now."

"Haha, yeah, I'm gonna go in. I was just enjoying the night air a bit," Claire told her absentmindedly. She was glad that Elisa-chan had probably managed to apologize to her uncle quite easily, but at the moment, Claire's mind was more focused on how quickly the Elric brothers were going to get caught after breaking into the mansion in such a conspicuous way. "I guess I'll see you tomorrow then?"

"Yeah!" the little girl said as Claire walked into the house and she walked out.

"Alright, bye bye!"

"Bye!" Elisa-chan waved. Claire waved back before closing the door and going to find the room Verucio-san was in. If Ed and Al wanted a place to stay for the night, Verucio-san was probably the only one who would take them after they broke into the mansion. Despite his exterior, the man loved kids too much to let them sleep outside.

* * *

><p>"Damn it," Ed cursed as he lay on the hard-packed dirt of a cliff overlooking the whole of Xenotime. His swollen cheek stung from the imposter's punch and he had to run away quickly from the mansion guards. "I'm hurting all over."<p>

"That imposter was strong," Al commented, giving what Ed felt was way too much credit to the guy.

"It must've been the stone's power," Ed said stubbornly.

"Then is that Philosopher's Stone complete?" his younger brother questioned.

"Cheh." Ed sat up, suddenly feeling determined again. "I'll be sure to find out."

"I wonder what those brothers' names are. Those two must have real names," Al said thoughtfully before pausing for a moment. "…Is the elder brother older than you?"

"Don't jump to conclusions based on height alone!"

Al held up his hands apologetically. "Sorry, sorry," he told his older brother.

Footsteps crunched the dirt behind them; Ed and Al turned to see who it was.

"… So this is where you were?" the dark-brown haired girl asked, looking slightly exasperated. "It was a pain to find you, you know."

"Claire!" Al exclaimed. "…That reminds me, I wanted to ask earlier, but what are you doing here?"

"Yeah," Ed said. He had already turned back in the direction he had originally been facing. "Stalker," he added.

"Who are you calling a stalker?" Claire demanded. Ed didn't bother to turn and face her, but she was probably pouting with her hands on her hips or something. That was just how she was. "I was here first, thank you very much. I was in Liore first too, for that matter."

"Whatever."

"You ought to be more grateful!" the fifteen year old girl complained. "I did go through the trouble of finding you guys a place to stay you know. I asked Verucio-san, and he said it was alright as long as I came to get you."

"Oh really?" Al asked, pleased. "Thank you!"

"You're welcome."

Ed said nothing, continuing the glare into space. He had a lot of things running through his mind just then. Meeting Claire again in Xenotime had certainly been a surprise, but it wasn't so farfetched to guess that it probably had something to do with the military. There had been a lot he wanted to ask her back in Liore, but he hadn't had the chance then. "…Why did you join the military?" he finally asked.

"Huh?" Claire asked. Apparently, she hadn't been expecting that question.

"Why did you join the military?" Ed repeated. His voice was monotone and dull as he concealed his emotion.

"Nii-san…"

"No reason," she said nonchalantly. "I just felt like it."

_Just… felt like it? Don't kid me_, Ed thought, gritting his teeth. Standing up, he grabbed Claire by the collar of her hoodie. His face was contorted with anger that he couldn't help but let spill over. "_No one_ joins the military because they just freaking feel like it!" he shouted.

"Nii-san!"

"Calm down and let go." Claire slapped his hand away from her collar. Ed let go but continued to clench his fists in anger. Al was looking between the two of them worriedly.

"… Do you even know what it means to join the military?" Ed growled quietly before repeating in a louder tone, "Do you?"

To become a dog of the military was to become a tool. A tool that had to follow orders, no matter what. A tool that would kill, if need be.

Her amber eyes watched him calmly, almost as if to further aggravate him. She acted as if she knew what she had done, as if she knew what it meant to become the military's dog, but if she did, hell if "I just felt like it" was her reason.

"Nii-san, she's right," Al said, gently grabbing his shoulder. "Calm down."

"Thanks, Al," she told him.

"Tch," Ed said before grouchily sitting down again and allowing himself to hide his face in his arms as he let go of some of his frustration. Like hell he believed that she joined the military because she just felt like it. There had to be another reason that she just wasn't telling them.

_She never tells us anything about herself though_, Ed's mind said_, so why would she start now? She never even really explained why she came to Resembool all those years ago, except to look for that bastard._

He couldn't recall one word she ever spoke about her past. They didn't know who her family ways, where she had come from, or why she was looking for Hohenheim.

_We really don't know anything about her…_

From behind him, he could hear Claire sigh. "…What have you two been up to for the past three years anyways?" she asked, and then added, "Besides military stuff, I mean. I always get to see the reports about that."

_It wouldn't be bad for her to rely on me and Al from time to time_, Ed thought angrily. She was too independent to do that though, and Ed knew it. How could he not, after all that time she had lived with them in Resembool?

_The only thing she ever told us after asking about that damn bastard was that she needed a place to stay._ Ed wondered if Claire had given an explanation to the old granny though because Pinako Rockbell had agreed to let her stay with her and Winry.

"There've been a lot of things," Al said, laughing slightly. Ed glanced towards his brother, hoping that Al hadn't been bothered too much by Ed's outburst. His younger brother always managed to keep his emotions in check so much better than he did.

"Really?" Claire asked.

"Yeah," Al told her. "We've done a lot of travelling and stuff…"

"The Philosopher's Stone is still pretty far off though, eh?"

"Yeah…"

"Ah well," Claire said. "I've done my fair share of travelling too. I usually get stuck with information gathering tasks and whatnot, considering that I work for the investigation department."

"Oh, you do?" Al asked. "So you work under Hughes-san then?"

"Yup!" Claire smiled. "After I moved out of Win-chan's place and went to Central, Maes-san let me stay with him and his family."

"Maes-san?"

"He told me to call him that, since I'm living with him and all," she explained. Ed found himself picking at the sparse patches of grass in front of him as he eavesdropped on the two of them.

"Oh," Al said. "He and Gracia-san are really nice. How's Elysia-chan?"

"Ah, Maes-san told me that you were there when she was first born! She's gotten a lot bigger since then. She's so cute!"

"It would certainly be nice to see her again."

"I'm sure she'd be glad to see you too! She's really friendly," Claire told him. She paused for a moment before moving on to a new topic. "You know, you guys really ought to send letters to Win-chan."

"Ahaha…" Al laughed guiltily. Ed fiddled with the grass some more.

"She won't say so, but I'm sure she misses you. And you guys _never _write."

"Yeah, whatever," Ed said, finally choosing to speak. He was still annoyed with Claire. "We'll write whenever we get around to it."

"If you aren't going to write, you should at least go see her."

"No," Ed said stubbornly. They had left for a reason – to get their bodies back. And they weren't going to rest until they got them back. What didn't Claire understand about that?

"How unromantic," Claire commented.

Ed glared at her, silent for a short while. He managed to control himself enough this time not to have another angry outburst, but only because he knew that starting another argument with her was going to get him absolutely nowhere. He did have to admit it was somewhat nice to see her again after all this time. When he next spoke, he changed the topic. "…By the way," he started, deciding is was time to get an answer for a question he had had for quite some time. "After we left Resembool to train with sensei, did you read the research data in our house?"

"Yup," Claire stated matter-of-factly. "How'd you know?"

"You did?" Al asked. Apparently he hadn't thought that far into it, but Claire was the type to always stick her nose where it didn't belong. She was far too curious for her own good.

"…Just seemed like something you'd do," Ed grumbled. That irked him. He didn't like the fact that she had read their father's research. There was nothing he could do about it now, though. Besides, she didn't know alchemy, so it wasn't as if she could use it to perform a human transmutation or anything… A thought crossed Ed's mind. "You were looking for that bastard when you first came to Resembool, right?"

"Assuming that 'that bastard' is Hohenheim, yes, I was. You sure did get angry at me when I first asked you about him. You practically attacked me," Claire accused.

…Yeah, Ed remembered that. But that wasn't the point. "Did you ever find him?" Ed asked.

"Nope."

"Cheh," Ed cursed under his breath. Their father really was nothing more than a good-for-nothing. He was never their when they needed him.

Not once had he been there for them.

Not once.

"Well anyways," Claire said, "You guys just tried to break into Magwar-sama's mansion, right?"

"Ah, yeah…" Al said, seeming somewhat embarrassed about it.

Ed, on the other hand, said, "Yeah, and?"

"You got caught," she stated simply. Ed found himself annoyed with the bluntness of her statement. She continued, "Are you guys going to break in again?"

Al looked towards Ed for an answer, and Ed said indignantly, "Of course, what do you expect? There's no way I'm letting those imposters run around using our names!"

"Alright," Claire said. "Next time, tell me, and I'm coming with you."

"Yeah, yeah, sure," Ed said, pretending to not really care whether she was there or not.

"Why do you want to come, Claire?" Al asked, surprised by her request. Ed suspected that he wasn't going to like the answer to that question.

"It involves my current assignment," Claire told him. Ed was right – he didn't like it. "In any case," she went on, "Verucio-san's going to be worried if I don't get back soon. You guys coming?"

"I'm coming!" Al said. "You're staying at his place too?"

"Yup. Ed, you are coming right?"

Ed stood up, brushing any possible dirt off of himself. "Yeah."

He wouldn't forgive Claire for joining the military, but she wasn't as shallow as she made herself sound, he knew that much.

Whatever her reason was, he'd just have to trust that it was a good one.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's note: <strong>This chapter is actually around the length that I plan my chapters to be but they very rarely are! Lol o_o

Before anyone gets the wrong idea, there are no romantic feelings between Claire and either of the Elrics.

This chapter is mostly informational because I wanted to explain Claire's relationship with Ed and Al a bit more. I hope you found it interesting, despite the lack of action.  
>There is a link on my profile to a picture I drew of Ed and Envy in a school uniform-ish outfit on my profile, if you want to check it out ;)<br>On the subject of Envy: I promise he will appear shortly after this arc finishes! I needed to include this arc for various reasons, and unfortunately, Envy is not just going to randomly pop up in Xenotime. So please don't shoot me x_x  
>(My estimate for his appearance will be after 2 more chapters. But this is just an estimate, keep that in mind.)<p>

** What do you think of Claire's relationship with Ed and Al? Did I manage to explain clear enough that it made sense?**

Thanks for reading~


	8. Xenotime 3: To Trick and be Tricked

Disclaimer: FMA belongs to Arakawa Hiromu.

* * *

><p><em>Recap: After going to Youswell Mine and Aquroya, the Elrics arrive in Xenotime, but Claire pretends not to know them. Later that evening, she walks Elisa home and tells her a story about a princess and a nature-loving peasant. Claire asks Verucio if the Elrics can stay at his house as well, and she meets them on the hill after they've broken into Magwar's mansion. Ed is still angry with her, but he says that he can come with them the next time they break into the mansio<em>n.

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 8 ~ To Trick and be Tricked <strong>

Late the next night when the moon was high in the sky, everything was peaceful in Xenotime... but not for much longer.

Ed poked Claire lightly, checking to see if she was still sound asleep.

No reaction. Good.

"Al," Ed whispered, "let's go."

Al nodded, and as silently as possible for a suit of armor, slid out of his sheets and followed Ed to the door. Since no one would be expecting them to break in again so soon, now was the perfect to execute what Ed had dubbed the "Mole Strategy." But the sleeping girl was most certainly not coming with them.

He hadn't had any intentions of taking her when she asked, and he still didn't have any intentions of taking her now. Al had objected when he'd first heard this piece of information, saying that, "She should know how to take care of herself since she's part of the military now," but Ed had adamantly refused to change his decision. He had only pretended to agree because he knew she wouldn't leave him alone otherwise. Even if she had a good reason, Ed thought it was too dangerous for her to come with them to the mansion. Did she even understand what it meant to join the military?

They slunk out of the house.

* * *

><p>When Ed and Al came back, Claire was irritably sitting on one of Verucio-san's sofas, drinking a cup of hot chocolate while reading a book called <em>Twilite<em>. As much as she wanted to read her _Sherwood Helmes_ novels, it was the middle of the night and she surely wouldn't be able to read them properly while she was half asleep. _Twilite_, on the other hand, was a nice, simple romance novel that required very little thought with a wonderful vampire-style Prince Charming.

Now, the reason why Claire was so irritable was because when she woke up in the middle of the night to get a drink of water, she realized that Ed and Al weren't in their beds. And after a bit of searching, she quickly determined that they weren't anywhere else in the house either. Upon noticing that Verucio-san was awake as well, she had asked him if he'd seen them. He, apparently, had also noticed their absence. He had also noticed all the racket they causing from the mansion. Claire turned the page of her book. She had asked Ed and Al to let her come with them because she felt that she couldn't get any farther with her investigation without getting into the mansion. Simply asking around wasn't yielding any results anymore, but she was clearly still missing quite a bit of information. How dare he lie to her.

…It wasn't as if she didn't know why he left her behind though. Ed was hot-tempered and rude, but he was a pretty caring guy, overall. Knowing him, he probably thought that she would get hurt or something if she went. While she knew he didn't like the fact that she was in the military, she doubted that he would sabotage her without a decent reason.

_It's not like I'm totally helpless though_, Claire grumbled silently to herself as she took a sip of her hot chocolate. Even if she wasn't strong in hand-to-hand combat, she did know how to use the gun that she kept in her bag. The military wouldn't send her out on jobs like this without at least some assurance that she could find for herself.

(The catch to that being that Claire hated to use the gun because it made far too much noise for someone who was trying to sneak around… not to mention that she was bad at aiming. But that wasn't the point.)

A few minutes later, Claire heard Verucio-san say, "I heard a lot of noise from the mansion," from his desk near the side door.

"Really?" Ed laughed guiltily.

"You went there again, didn't you?" Verucio-san accused, quite justifiably. It didn't take a genius to figure out where Ed and Al might have snuck out to in the middle of the night. "You guys just can't be helped."

"Eh? Elisa is still here?" Al asked, and it occurred to Claire that they were right by the room Elisa-chan was sleeping in. Although she couldn't hear the little girl's coughing from her current location (she was in another room after all), she figured that Ed and Al probably could from where they were.

"Yes," Verucio-san said, standing up from his chair. "The grape tree is about to wither, so she doesn't want to leave its side. Since her cough is getting worse though, I put her to bed. "

"Is she going to be alright?" Al asked worriedly.

The man didn't answer that question. Instead, he said tersely, "Follow me," and Claire heard their footsteps coming towards the room that she was sitting in.

Claire glanced towards Ed and Al as they walked sheepishly into the room. Verucio-san gestured to them to sit on one of the sofas before walking out of the room, probably to serve some coffee for himself and hot chocolate for Ed and Al. From behind her book, Claire studied the two of them. Ed refused to look at her, and Al seemed embarrassed and guilty. _Hmm… _Claire thought_, I bet neither of them really wants to see me right now_. But since she hadn't been able to go with them, she was going to make up for that by getting all the information she could from them. Placing a bookmark in to mark her page, Claire put the book down beside her.

"So guys," she began. Her tone of voice was natural and friendly, as if she wasn't at all feeling betrayed. "How'd it go?"

"…How'd what go?" Ed asked grudgingly, apparently not wanting to answer her questions. Al said nothing.

"Oh, don't be silly, of course you know," Claire said lightly as if she was talking about something entirely trivial. If you hadn't heard what she said in context, you might have thought she was talking about the latest gossip. "Breaking into the mansion, what else?"

"Cheh."

_Not well_, Claire mentally translated Ed's response as Verucio-san walked back into the room. He passed out the steaming drinks, and a somewhat awkward silence descended upon the group. Claire pondered whether it would be better to chastise Ed and Al about leaving her behind when the man wasn't around or whether it would be better to simply let it go and do something herself instead.

After weighing her options for a bit, Claire decided on the latter. It wasn't as if she wasn't mad at Ed and Al anymore, but she wanted to choose the option with the optimum result for her. Letting her anger get the better of her judgment simply would not do. _After all_, she thought, _since they've failed again, they have to go back once more… right?_

That meant she would have another chance to get into the mansion.

_They can't stop me from coming if they don't know I've come._

"…Since you keep going to the mansion," Verucio-san started, breaking the silence, "have you actually found out anything useful?"

"They're researching this substance called red water," Ed answered, before taking a drink from his mug. He appeared to be more open to answering Verucio-san's questions than hers… perhaps due to a mixture of guilt and arrogance.

"Red water?" the man asked, surprise, and even alarm, in his voice. He seemed to have some recognition of the term, as did Claire. She was pretty sure that one of the books in Central's library said that it was a similar compound to the Philosopher's Stone. She wondered if that was what Tall Ed meant when he mentioned that the product of their research was still incomplete.

"They were trying to crystallize it to make a stone," Ed continued. "But then again, the water is only an imitation compared to the Philosopher's Stone."

"…What do you think he meant by wanting to fulfill his father's dream?" Al asked his older brother. Since Ed probably wasn't going to answer anything she asked, Claire keened her ears to listen and analyze everything they were saying. She was curious about what the fake Elrics' father had to do with this now anyways.

"That must've just been some excuse," Ed said, shrugging off the idea that that could possibly be important. Claire sighed inwardly. Overlooking details never did anyone any good.

"Those two…" Verucio-san said, "could they be Nash's sons?"

_Nash… Nash Tringham?_

"Nash?" Ed asked, voicing Claire's thoughts. "You mean the one who discovered the red water, Nash Tringham?"

That man, she recognized his name. Not just from one of the books in Central's library… from somewhere much more important. He was one of the people she had been looking for, in hopes that he would have information on yet another person that she was looking for.

"He was from this city," the man explained. "He went to Central City to do research on the red water, but one day, he came back to this city. He quit his research, left his family, and never spoke of what happened in Central. That's when this city's greatest landowner, Magwar, spoke to him. He proposed research on the red water."

Claire listened intently. She had never expected the man to have such a treasure trove of information for her. Ed and Al were quiet, equally interested in what they were hearing.

"…He ended up confining himself in one of Magwar's mines, where he began the research," Verucio-san went on. "The city became prosperous with gold again. Furnaces filled with fire, and merchandise filled the streets. Life returned to the people, but at the same time, an unknown sickness began to spread. Many newborn babies died because there was no way to cure it."

"Elisa is from that time…" Ed observed.

"That sickness, was it just coincidence that it spread at the same time as the prosperity?" Claire asked. She was trying to connect what she'd just heard. For Nash Tringham to be so silent about what happened in Central, surely something had happened that he regretted.

"It wasn't," Verucio-san said before continuing. "After a while, Marcoh, an alchemist doctor, came here. He said that the red water was the poison that was causing the illness, and every time he healed a child, a bright light would shine and then the illness would be cured."

"It was shining?" Ed asked. Claire had already gotten over her surprise since she'd already heard this part of the story from the pharmacist. She was, however, curious about the poisonous nature of the red water… she couldn't remember reading anything about that.

"Yeah."

"Could that light have been…" Al began before trailing off, but Claire knew what the end of his sentence was: _Could that light have been… alchemy?_

"Anyways, it's certain that Elisa was saved thanks to his treatment. I pressed Nash for answers, but all he said was that he was wrong and that 'it happened again.' After that, he was never seen again. Eventually, less gold was mined, and the city began to decline… If those two are Nash's sons, they must have come after their father…"

* * *

><p>The next day, Ed and Al walked into the mansion through the front entrance. Without breaking in. For a reason that Claire could not hear at the distance she was hiding, Magwar-sama had actually warmly invited the two of them in. Slightly perplexed by that, Claire watched from a distance before finding a nice tree to sit under while she waited. Since this time she was awake enough, she pulled out her latest <em>Sherwood Helmes<em> novel.

She had to be careful how she sat though. Currently wearing the cheapest, expensive-looking pink frilly dress she could get her hands, she had to place her normal clothes on the ground beneath her so that her dress wouldn't get dirty. To go along with that dress, she had tied her hair up in a pony tail with a thick, lace-covered ribbon and put a thin layer of makeup on. Her normal backpack had been left at Verucio-san's house and replaced with a rather large but decent-looking purse, which was what she had used to carry her normal clothes.

Perfect.

Making sure to get up early enough, Claire had ran down to the local dress shop and accessory shop to pick out some clothes that she thought would give her the "rich girl" look that morning. She hadn't known when exactly the Elrics would decide to go to the mansion again, so she had to get that errand done early. Unlike the Elrics who thought it was perfectly okay for them to break into the mansion with no disguise whatsoever, Claire made sure she had changed her appearance just enough.

Just enough that someone who didn't know her well wouldn't recognize her immediately.

There was, after all, no point in trying the impossible and attempting to break in and sneak around entirely unnoticed.

Now, all she had to do was wait for the Elrics to start causing a ruckus. She was almost entirely sure they would at some point, and that would be when she made her move.

She knew exactly what she would do.

* * *

><p>Hidden among the thick forest trees nearby the mansion, Lust watched the scene play out before her, just the way she had planned it. Originally, her goal here was to use Magwar's research of the red water to cause many deaths for the creation of the Philosopher's Stone, but now he was proving useless. They didn't need him anymore. He needed to disappear.<p>

_Humans were like porcelain dolls to a homunculus like her. How easily they broke when they crashed to the floor. _

From where she stood, though, Lust could also see that odd girl – Claire, she was called – sitting under a tree and reading a book. Her attire was changed greatly since Lust had last scene her, but Lust remembered her clearly. It wasn't everyday that Envy let a human even have a chance at living after all.

She did, however, seem to know the Elrics. Lust wondered what sort of role this girl would play in the future.

_And yet…_

_It was they, the homunculi, who were truly the dolls. _

_They were soulless, forever unchanging. _

Smoothly and gracefully, as if one with the shadows, Lust disappeared into the forest. Now that she was done here, she had to make one more visit to Liore.

* * *

><p><em>Kabaam!<em> The sound of someone firing.

Alfred Hex stood just inside the lobby of Magwar-sama's mansion. Alfred was a freckle-faced young man with some of the sleekest black hair around the entire town. He was far from the strongest guy in the area, but Magwar-sama had been kind enough to hire him as a security guard because his family was poor. For this, Alfred showed his appreciation through working his hardest at all times and never slacking off, the way some of the guards did.

The single shot became many as the firing grew rapid, like a machine gun.

The black-haired young man was beginning to feel very worried about the elder man. Earlier, Magwar-sama had taken the two boys who had previously been the intruders in with him, and Alfred could only hope that they weren't shooting at Magwar-sama right now.

The firing stopped. Something crashed to the floor.

Alfred glanced towards the stairs behind him, wanting to run up to Magwar-sama's room to check if he was alright. But Alfred didn't have any skills in medical treatment, so if he did go, he'd be useless, not to mention the fact that quite a few of the other guards had already left their posts rushed in that direction. It would be better for him to stay here.

Just then, he felt a tap on his shoulder. Turning his attention away from the stairs and back in the direction of the front entrance, Alfred found himself looking a short, dark brown-haired teenage girl.

"Who are you?" the young man asked, frowning. Had she just walked in the front door when he was facing the other way? Considering her fancy dress and accessories, she hardly looked like an intruder. She didn't look particularly strong either – she looked just like any other normal, wealthy girl. He could have sworn he'd seen her somewhere before though…

"Eh? You don't know?" the girl asked. Suddenly, she looked embarrassed, as if she was a bit shy. "M-Magwar is my uncle. I'm his niece."

"His niece?" Alfred asked. He couldn't remember if Magwar-sama mentioned having a niece.

The girl nodded bashfully. "Umm… there should be some pictures of me and Uncle Magwar's brother, my father, somewhere in the house, if you don't recognize me. We do send them every year, after all."

The young security guard couldn't remember seeing this girl in any of the pictures Magwar-sama had, but she certainly didn't seem like she was lying. And anyways, even though he couldn't remember them, those pictures were probably where he recognized her from. "Well," Alfred said, "what's your name?"

"…Francesca."

"It's kind of dangerous here right now," Alfred warned her. The shooting had stopped a short while before the girl had appeared, so there was a chance that she hadn't heard it. Alfred bit his lip, hoping that it had stopped because Magwar-sama had managed to stop the intruder. He didn't want to explain the whole situation to the girl though. She seemed like the fragile type who would break down with worry. "There were some intruders earlier," he summarized.

"Oh, my Lord!" Francesca exclaimed, confirming the fact that she hadn't heard any shooting. "I-is my uncle alright? He's not hurt, right? Right?"

"He's fine," Alfred lied, "but it's still too dangerous for you to wander around alone. The intruders might still be around." The security guard knew for a fact that the intruders were almost definitely still around, but he didn't want to scare her.

The girl let out a huge sigh of relief. "Thank the Lord," she said gratefully.

"It might, perhaps, still be safer for you to be outside the mansion," he suggested. He absolutely could not let Magwar-sama's niece be put in danger, but frightening her would do him no good either.

"Umm…" the girl said, reverted to her previous timidity, "but I need to see my uncle's research data. And, umm… you can protect me, right?"

"His research data?" Alfred asked in surprise. He would be honored to be relied on by Magwar-sama's niece, but he did want to know why she wanted to see his research data. "I'm afraid that's confidential," he told her.

"I'm here to help Uncle Magwar with his research though," his niece explained nervously. "Umm… if you want proof, I can show you a letter with the family seal on it."

_A letter with the family seal?_ Alfred wondered. _Magwar-sama does stamp many of his letters with a rather extravagant seal that might be his family seal. _ "No, it's alright," the young security guard told her. He didn't want to be rude, and she wouldn't have offered that unless she really did have one, right?

"Are you sure?" the girl asked, but she didn't wait for him to answer her. "Umm… well, okay then. Would you be so kind as to take me to the study then?"

"Oh, of course."

* * *

><p>Claire was so pleased at how smoothly her plan had gone that she practically flounced into the study after telling the security guard to wait for her outside. With the door closed, Claire allowed an ear-to-ear grin slip across her face to honor her success.<p>

It wasn't because the guard was gullible that he had been fooled so easily: it was because of her careful usage of human psychology to her advantage.

Now how, exactly, did that work?

The guard's family lived in town, so he had most likely visited the town within the past few weeks. Nearly everyone in the town visited Elisa-chan's restaurant, and because she was new, everyone had at least caught a glimpse of her – but a glimpse wasn't enough to make her identifiable no matter how she dressed.

Think about it: If you've only seen a person once and the next time you see them they're wearing a costume, you might think she looks familiar, but you probably won't recognize her.

Because of this, she could easily plant the idea of where he might have seen her before. His mind would be quick in accepting it since it would be the explanation to the question, "Where have I seen this girl before?" – a question she answered by telling him that she was in some of Magwar-sama's photographs.

Which, in turn, proved that she _must_ be his niece. Otherwise, he wouldn't have pictures of her, right?

_Haha_, Claire thought triumphantly. _I don't need Ed and Al's help at all in order to find out what I need!_

But with that, she decided she had only cleared the first stage of her work. Getting here would be an entirely useless effort if she didn't actually find any information. She let her eyes scan the room, observing her surroundings.

This particular study that she had had the guard take her to was separate from the fake Elric's study – this was where Magwar-sama compiled all the fake Elric's research. The room wasn't particularly large, and it was very well-kept. Desks with heaps of paper and books hid the stark white walls behind them, and the odor of chemicals was just faintly lingered in the air. On the far wall, there were a few bookshelves, but most of the books in the house, she suspected, were kept in that mini library that she and the guard had passed on the way here. After quickly locating the light switch, Claire flipped off the overly bright lights in favor of opening the curtains of the single window in the room.

Claire couldn't guarantee she would have a lot of time to check the place out, so she was going to have to choose a good place to start and gather whatever information she could. The first things she disregarded were the stacks of books – she could probably read most of them in Central's library anyways. That, however, did not clear up the problem of having to determine what was and was not important from tons of loose paper. She wouldn't be able to read through any amount of it to determine its importance without rushing and rushing would only cause her to not comprehend any of what she was reading.

_In that case_, Claire decided, _I'll start my search with the drawers of that big wooden desk in the corner, since it looks like the main one._

Hastily but methodically, Claire carefully inspected the contents of each drawer. The first drawer she opened had only pens and instruments. Useless.

The second drawer had a stack of papers that contained equations, conversion tables, and various theses. They were standard ones though, ones that were already published elsewhere. Equally useless.

Upon opening the third drawer, Claire found an empty glasses case and a few empty notebooks. She flipped through them quickly to make sure there really was nothing in them, and then put them aside. She was starting to get somewhat frustrated that she couldn't find anything because she knew she wouldn't get very far by searching those paper piles and those were her only other option.

But then she noticed something slightly odd.

Puzzled, she reopened the drawer above the current one she had open and removed its contents.

She closed it again and looked back at the third drawer, a frown creasing her face.

_That drawer's deeper than this one_, she thought. _Why…?_

Then, an idea came to mind.

_So that's how it is._

This time taking the drawer out of the desk entirely, Claire made sure it was entirely empty, and started looking it over. She didn't see any screws or anything holding the bottom of the drawer in. Surely, it wasn't that simple? Claire raised an eyebrow in slight bewilderment.

And flipped the drawer over.

It was if she had dumped out a candy jar. The wood that had previously been the bottom clattered to the floor, and on top of it fell a spiral-bound journal. A single glass bottle rolled across the ground. _So… it was that simple…?_ Claire blinked, finding herself slightly shocked at the simplicity of it.

"Hey, is everything alright in there, Miss?" the security guard asked from outside the door.

"Y-yes!" Claire stuttered, pretending to be "Francesca" again. "I'm just a little klutzy is all."

"Alright."

Claire sighed, relieved that the guard believed her before returning to her thoughts. Okay, flipping the drawer over was a slight lapse in judgment because she hadn't considered the noise it would make but…

_Isn't the person who designed this thing sort of… stupid?_ she wondered. She had flipped it over because she hadn't suspected the piece of wood covering the hidden compartment to fall out so easily. But in any case, the contents of the hidden compartment were surely important for one reason or another, because otherwise they wouldn't be hidden.

_Kabaam!_

Last time, it had been a few gun fires. This time, the whole mansion shook.

Claire's eyes widened, her brain quickly analyzing the situation. She didn't know what the Elrics were doing, but she needed to get out of here.

A clock crashed to the floor, its face shattering.

She couldn't guarantee her safety if she stayed for too much longer; it was better to leave while she was still ahead. Staying here too long might result in getting caught up in the chaos that would ensue as people tried to figure out what happened.

To no one at all, she heard the security guard ask "Wha-what's going on?" from outside the door. His voice was filled with terror – he had probably forgotten about her in his panic.

A pile of paper collapsed. Countless papers drifted to the floor. A stack of books toppled over.

The shaking continued. If she didn't know better, she would have thought it was an earthquake, and a strong one at that.

Hurriedly snatching up the contents of the hidden compartment, Claire stuffed them in her purse. Forget putting the drawer away and cleaning up any evidence. The guard would know something was up from the second she went missing. No one except Magwar-sama would know what she'd taken anyways, since he'd obviously been keeping it secret.

Claire tested her legs. She had been sitting down while looking at the drawers, but with all the shaking, it would be difficult to stand up. Still, she couldn't afford to wait for it to stop entirely. She had to escape before the guard outside was reoriented enough to check on her.

Just a bit, she could tell the shaking had grown weaker.

Her legs wobbled terribly as she tried to stand up, and she tried desperately to keep her balance. Now that the shaking wasn't as strong as it had been a few seconds ago though, she found herself able to stand. Regretting her choice of shoes (she had been wearing high heels), she threw them off her feet. She didn't have time to worry about taking them with her. She was leaving some evidence behind, and the guard had seen her face anyways. It didn't matter whether or not she left the high heels at this point.

_The window_, she thought, _I only need to get that far._

She dashed towards it, deciding that she was more likely to make it there if she was fast than careful. It was like the way how, when riding a bike, you are more likely to fall off balance if you move slowly.

The shaking had grown quite weak now. Soon the guard would remember her.

She reached the window – thankfully, this was still the first floor. Her eyes darted around, searching for the lock. She flipped it, and swung the window open.

"Francesca-san?" the guard shouted. Apparently he was alright now. "We need to get out of here; it's too dangerous!"

Claire swung the window open and climbed outside. Her feet, covered only by thin nylon stockings, felt the moisture of the grass. She could hear the rushing of water somewhere nearby… where?

The guard banged on the door. "Francesca-san?" he asked again. "Are you al—"

Claire slammed the window shut, not caring about what the guard said at this point. She had succeeded in finding something important, and now she was just making her clean escape. From where she was, she could see Ed and Al, followed by the fake Elrics, sprinting out from the mansion.

She ran in their direction.

* * *

><p>The red water seeped out from the mountain, running down the rocks in miniature waterfalls. The scene would have been beautiful, if not for the deadly nature of the water. The four of them – Ed, Al, Russell, and Fletcher – had just barely escaped from the underground tunnel, but it was hardly over yet. Already, small puddles of the red water were appearing around their feet.<p>

_Damn it._

Ed raced forward, acting on the first idea that came to mind. He couldn't let the water flood the main city. He clapped his hands and slammed his palms into the soft dirt, causing a thick rock wall to rise around the mansion. Instantly, the water rushed into the newly created dam.

Ed sighed, partially relieved. "Now, if the flow will stop…" He glanced towards the mountain, his relief dissipating into a sinking feeling. A few seconds ago, the veins of red water flowing from the mountain hadn't been too big, but now the water was flowing in torrents.

Fletcher rushed towards the nearest tree, pulling a piece of white chalk from his pocket and sketching a transmutation circle upon it. As the boy activated the circle, his touch of the tree was almost tender, loving. Ed watched in awe as the neon green light emitted from the circle began to envelop tree after tree surrounding the mansion. It was almost as if every tree was a candle, and each successive candle lit a further candle with a soft green fire.

The soft green faded into a dull maroon, and then into an ashen gray as the level of the red water dropped.

"The trees are…" Ed began in amazement, saying his thoughts aloud, "…absorbing the red water?" He had never seen anything like it before.

"Nii-san," Al exclaimed, "I saw plants like this in the laboratory!"

"Is he trying to make the trees absorb the red water and leech out the poison…?"

Al didn't answer, and Ed turned to see Russell standing beside Fletcher, the green glow of the transmutation circle getting brighter once more. As if the trees were gulping down the water to quench insatiable thirst, they sucked up the water. Everything from their bark to their leaves had turned to a red color.

This time, Ed knew that the water flow had been stopped. Smiling with relief, he said, "They did it."

And with that, the trees became a cold blue, before shattering into tiny particles that were carried away by the light breeze. Like thousands and thousands of snowflakes, they danced across the sky, glittering as the sun reflected off of them before disappearing in the distance. The town was safe; it was all over.

"That was… gorgeous. Just like a scene out of a fairy tale!"

"…Yeah," Ed agreed. But then something occurred to him – the speaker of that sentence was female, and there was only one girl he knew who rambled about fairy tales incessantly. "CLAIRE?" he exclaimed, flipping around.

Al, Russell, and Fletcher seemed equally shocked to see her there.

"Yes..?" she asked, smiling that fake innocent smile of hers. As usual, she was pretending as if her presence there was completely normal.

"…When did you get here?" Ed asked with a twitching grin.

"Oh, I've been standing near you guys for quite some time already."

Ed could feel his anger gauge gradually rising – or perhaps not so gradually. He had meant, "When did you get to the mansion?" not "When did you appear next to us?"

He was beginning to notice that she had an extreme tendency to appear out of nowhere…

* * *

><p>It was amazing how much could happen in a single day – by that very evening, Claire, Ed, and Al were already on a train leaving Xenotime. After Claire had met up with the group of them at the mansion, Ed had gotten angry with her yet again (it seemed that as of recently, he was always mad at her), and Tall Ed (whose name she learned was Russell), said a few things that caused Ed to redirect his anger towards him. Something along the lines of, "Lying to a girl – you're awfully low sometimes, aren't you, Ed?" with a smirk on his face and a shrug, indicated Ed's hopelessness.<p>

Ed, of course, had taken that as an insult to his height and started throwing an Edward-tantrum.

But in the end, everything had worked out just fine. The reason she was leaving together with the Elrics had been explained as merely chance to anyone who asked. Claire had changed back into her normal clothes and had found time to call Colonel Mustang to give him a quick summary of what happened. She still had to give him a full report later though. While Ed and Al were saying their goodbyes to Russell, Fletcher, and Elisa, she examined the spoils of her exploit.

The first was a bottle containing a stone approximately the size of a piece of hard candy. Blood red in color, it let off a light sheen that reflected slightly off the sides of the bottle.

The second was a spiral-bound journal, almost all the pages yellowed and blank. Out of all the pages, only the first had been written on in scraggly black script.

_14 January 1914_

_They had vanished into thin air all those years ago after telling me to kill Nash Tringham for his incompetence. I hadn't heard from them again; I thought they were never coming back. _

_They were the ones who had spoken to me of the red water in the first place. They were the ones who had told me of all the wealth, the power, the glory it would bring to me if my research succeeded. I knew that working with people as dangerous as them was a risk, but all nothing can be obtained without risk. Life itself is a gamble._

_Last time, the one who met with me was a strange, green-haired, androgynous teenager who always wore a smirk across his face. This time, though, it was a woman. Like the boy, she refused to give out her name, but she was the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen. Her eyes were a dull shade of violet, her voice was smooth and alluring, her hair dark and gorgeous, rippling down her back. She has warned me what will happen if my research is unsuccessful once more._

_This time, this time for sure, I will get the Philosopher's Stone in my hands. _

_Death is all that awaits those who can accomplish naught but failure._

Carefully, Claire placed both items back into her bag before anyone noticed them. That journal entry… it didn't make sense. "All those years ago" was when the "strange green-haired, androgynous teenager" had been the one to meet with Magwar-sama.

Envy was a strange, green-haired, androgynous teenager.

Envy had been involved with Cornello-sama, who had been involved with the Philosopher's Stone.

And although she hadn't seen the woman who had been speaking with Cornello-sama, the description of her voice matched perfectly.

All of it seemed like too much of a coincidence to be a coincidence. It could have been a coincidence if not for the description of the first person Magwar-sama had met, but how often did you meet a green-haired androgynous teenager?

_But…_ Claire wondered, _how is that possible?_

"Claire-nee! Claire-nee!" Elisa-chan shouted, breaking Claire's train of thought.

"Eh…?" Claire asked, not having heard a word Elisa-chan said before that. She had been too preoccupied.

"Haha," the little girl laughed. "You're a space case!"

"Hey!"

"Make sure you visit sometime, alright?" she asked. "The story-telling was really fun!"

Claire smiled. "Yup!"

"You too, Ed-san!" Fletcher said. "We'll make this city a better place!"

"When that happens," Elisa-chan said innocently, "I hope you're bigger."

"What did you say?" Ed shouted playfully. As much as he hated being called short, he did make an effort to be nicer to kids. "That wasn't nice!"

Fletcher and Elisa-chan laughed, and even Russell let a small smile slip onto his face.

"Well," Claire said just as the train whistle blew, "I guess we'll be leaving now." Slowly, the train started to move.

"Bye bye!" Al called, as he and Ed waved.

"See you again!" Claire added. She would have waved as well, but there was no room for her in the window with both Ed and Al in front of it.

"Bye!" Fletcher and Elisa-chan called, and within almost no time at all, they were out of sight.

The train chugged into the distance, taking them farther and farther away from Xenotime and closer and closer to East City, their next destination. It was finally time for her to return to the Headquarters. Her plans had originally been to go back to Central after reporting in to Colonel Mustang since her actual supervisor was Lieutenant Colonel Hughes.

Instead, she was going to make a request – a request that would hopefully allow her to solve all the mysteries she had uncovered, particularly upon finding the journal entry.

She didn't know exactly how long ago "all those years ago" was, but it should have been around a decade.

If Envy had been a teenager then, why was he still a teenager now?

* * *

><p><strong>Author's note:<strong> So yeah, that's the end of the Xenotime arc. After this, I think that there will be one more chapter before Envy gets to appear again. I'm not making any promises though.

I've been updating once every two weeks, but due to an extreme amount of homework, the wait for my next update or two may have to be prolonged a bit. Sorry ^^;

A comment: Alfred Hex's name was entirely purely random. It was the first name that came to mind, so I used it. Lol. (The same goes for the name Francesca.)

**What did you think of Claire's investigation of the mansion and the "trick" she used on Alfred Hex?  
><strong>(I hope I didn't confuse anyone. And by the way, please don't try that trick on real people... it probably only works in theory.)

- And now you may have a heart attack because Claire likes "Twilite" -

Thanks for reading~


	9. East HQ: Time for a Sunny Vacation

Disclaimer: FMA belongs to Arakawa Hiromu.

* * *

><p><em>Recap: Ed and Al leave Claire behind to break into Magwar's mansion again, and when they come back, Verucio tells all three of them about the red water and Nash Tringham. Later, when Ed and Al go to the mansion once more, Claire waits for them to cause a ruckus before she tricks a guard into letting her into Magwar's study. She finds a red stone there and a journal with a single entry written by Magwar, mentioning a beautiful woman and an androgynous teenager. As they leave Xenotime for East City, she can't help but wonder about the two Magwar talks about in the journal entry.<em>

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 9 ~ Time for a Sunny Vacation <strong>

The day that Claire, Ed, and Al arrived in East City could be described with the following words:

Humid, sticky, wet, gray, dull, cold, and dreary.

Either late that night or very early that morning, a thick layer of mouse-colored clouds had rolled in, and now they were just sitting overhead. They didn't seem to be moving away at all. Rather than gradually moving on to another area, the clouds simply stayed above East City, drizzling rain upon them during the day. Sometimes, there'd be a short rain break, but most of the time, it was constant.

Rain, rain, and more rain.

Claire stared at the window, watching the rain water endlessly flow down it. Occasionally, there would be one droplet that would eat another, thus becoming a bigger droplet, which would then eat yet another droplet. She let her eyes follow the trails of those droplets down the cold glass windowpane. She really didn't have anything better to do at that moment.

Ed sat on the sofa across from her, giving his report to Colonel Mustang. Claire pretty much already knew all the details of what Ed was telling him – the only new information was about a thief called Psiren who didn't particularly interest her. Al happened to be elsewhere at that particular moment since he wasn't obligated to make any military reports. Claire wouldn't make her report until Ed was finished, so she just let herself listen to the monotonous pitter-pattering of the rain.

"Is it true that the face of Psiren under the mask is beautiful?" Mustang was asking Ed. His voice was bored and somewhat business-like, but he was clearly making a point to the older Elric.

"You've made your point that you know everything that we did," Ed grumbled embarrassedly, turning his face from Mustang. The police of Aquroya, as the Colonel had stated a bit earlier, had been the ones to inform him about Psiren, but Claire didn't feel the need to enlighten Ed that the reports about Liore and Xenotime were from her.

No need to redirect Ed's annoyance towards her, right?

Mustang sighed, and stood up from his desk. "Fullmetal one, why not settle down for a while?" He walked towards the window and watched the monotonous rain.

"You want me to just listen to what you say here?" Ed objected. "We have a purpose."

"…The Philosopher's Stone, eh?" Mustang asked. "But even after three years of searching, you haven't found it."

This time, Ed was the one who stood up. "I'll definitely find it!" he stated determinedly. He bowed his head slightly, as was proper etiquette in the military towards a superior officer, before turning to leave.

But he stopped.

"Colonel," Ed said, "does the name Marcoh ring a bell? He's a doctor who appeared in Xenotime five years ago. He is also an alchemist. He cured the red water poisoning that no one else could with alchemy. If he's that good, I thought the military would at least know his name."

Claire mildly wondered if both Ed and the Colonel had forgotten she was in the room since she hadn't spoken for a while, but she was listening intently to this piece of information. She had also been curious about Dr. Marcoh.

"The name is unfamiliar to me, but I will look into it."

Suddenly, the door opened and Lieutenant Hawkeye walked in. "Colonel," she stated, catching his attention. Claire, Ed, and Mustang turned.

As if on cue, a number of high-ranking officers rapidly filed into the room in perfect formation. They stood against three of the four walls of the room, and in the center of them all, right in the entranceway of the room, stood Brigadier General Basque Grand. Each and every one of the officers seemed serious and uptight as Claire let her eyes wander over the new occupants of the room. _Why are they here…?_ she wondered.

Then, on the far, far left, she spotted Lieutenant Colonel Hughes. Although he wore the same stern expression as the rest of the soldiers when he first walked in, he quickly loosened up as she caught him giving a light shrug to Mustang. Despite the gloomy weather outside, Claire brightened considerably.

"This is an unexpected visit, Brigadier General," Mustang said, saluting the superior officer.

"As of today," the dark-skinned, bald man replied, "we will be making this office a temporary Central Headquarters."

"…Temporary Central Headquarters?" Mustang wondered out loud.

A hearty laugh resounded from behind the brigadier general, who quickly moved aside for the smiling man who was now walking into the room.

"I'm sorry for the trouble," he said lightheartedly. Everyone else was tense; he was at ease. His most distinguishing feature was probably the eye patch covering his left eye, but even without it, Claire would have been able to recognize the man – the Fuhrer. Fuhrer Bradley. Behind him was a woman that Claire supposed was his secretary.

Even though Maes-san had shrugged as if to say everything was okay, Claire wondered if everything was really alright.

"…But let's be optimistic here," the Fuhrer continued.

"Fuhrer, sir…" Mustang said in disbelief.

"The Fuhrer and his men will be inspecting the East."

* * *

><p>"The weather today…."<p>

"Of course, and did you see the Fuhrer…"

"My son lost his first tooth…"

Claire couldn't help but hear snippets of the soldiers' conversations as she paid the cafeteria's cashier for her hot chocolate. The buzz of chatter in the cafeteria was loud, with perhaps a hundred or so soldiers sitting there. The soldiers from Central had already mixed in with those from the East, and they were eagerly chatting amount each other. As someone who generally worked in Central though, this many soldiers really didn't seem like so many.

Standing on tip-toe so she could see a little better around the heads of all the soldiers, Claire scanned the cafeteria to look for a certain blond-haired boy and black-haired, glasses-wearing man. She tried to ignore the fact that she must have looked like such a child at that moment. She didn't want to be considered a child, but… all the other military guys were so tall.

…That was kind of annoying. And even on tip-toe, she still couldn't see very well. Her only other choice was to start jumping like a child trying to see what sort of ice cream flavors the ice cream man had. And there was no way she was going to do that. Not only would that make her look like a little kid, it would also make her hot chocolate spill all over the place.

But at least she could say that she was short because she was a girl. Ed, on the other hand, did not have any excuse for his lack of height. Claire found a small grin threaten to slink over her face at that thought.

Just then, she spotted Hughes and Ed sitting at an emptier table on the far end of the cafeteria. Careful to not spill her drink on herself or run into anybody, Claire maneuvered her way to the table.

"I still don't know what we're going to do with that cat Al picked up…" Ed was saying as Claire sat down. Ed had been grumbling about that ever since he'd realized that Al had saved it from the rain. "We can't take care of it, but he won't let it go."

Hughes grinned. "But that's just how Al is, isn't it?"

"Well yeah, but – "

"I'm sure Al knows that you guys can't keep that cat," Hughes told him. "Just let him figure out what to do with it."

Ed sighed and laid his head on the table in defeat. His mood certainly seemed to be in tune with the weather.

Turning to Claire, Hughes asked, "So how's it been working under Colonel Mustang? He said he was low on officers and he needed someone fairly competent to investigate those desert miracles. I thought you'd find them interesting."

"Oh yes, investigating the miracles was actually really fun!" Claire exclaimed happily. Then she paused and looked away, letting a rather grim expression take over her face. "…Working under Colonel Mustang was not."

Hughes laughed apologetically.

"He won't stop making fun of me!"

Ed suddenly perked up and almost slammed his mug on the table in excitement. "Now you know what it's like to be me!" he said, standing up and pointing at her for no real reason. "Every time I come back here, I have to listen to the Colonel's long and sarcastic remarks again!"

"Really, Ed, I don't know how you stand him!" Claire complained. "Agh, he's so frustrating!"

"You're telling me?" Ed groaned. "Didn't you hear him when he walked into the room earlier? 'Hm? Why is there only one of you today? Where's Fullmetal?'" Ed pretended to be Mustang and acted as if he was looking around the room. "'I heard both of you were here… Oh! There you are, Fullmetal. I couldn't see you from behind the sofa!'" This time, Ed feigned one of Mustang's oh-don't-take-me-so-seriously laughs with his hands.

"Ugh, yeah," Claire said, taking a sip of her drink as Ed irritably sat back down in his chair. "He's got this Prince Charming face and demeanor, but then when he opens his mouth… it all goes, 'Boom!'" She gestured with her hands to imply an explosion.

"I bet he told you something along the lines of, 'Her highness is back from her life-risking adventure?'" Ed looked down at imaginary papers that he was signing with an imaginary pencil on the cafeteria table. "'I am very sorry for putting your life in danger, Princess.'"

"Ehh? How'd you know?"

"It's his freakin' personality."

"Yeah, true. When I told him he was nothing at all like a Prince Charming, he told me," Claire coughed and attempted to copy Mustang's self-important tone, "'Prince Charmings come in all shapes and sizes.'"

Ed crinkled his nose in disgust. "Was he implying that he's charming in some way?"

"Oh, I hope not," Claire said.

"If anything, he's the oh-so-important mustang that the oh-so-charming prince rides," Ed said sarcastically.

For a moment or two: Awkward silence.

"…That was a lame pun, Ed."

"Shut it."

Hughes, who hadn't spoken in a little while, chuckled. "Mustang isn't actually that bad a guy, you know."

"But he's so annoying!" Claire complained.

"He does care about you guys, though."

"Hmph," Claire pouted haughtily. Suddenly, she felt like a schoolgirl being scolded for talking bad about a teacher.

"Yeah, whatever," Ed said moodily, crossing his arms across his chest and looking away. He didn't like being told that Mustang cared about him any more than Claire did, apparently.

And then there was another somewhat awkward silence as the two teenagers acted like, well, teenagers. Claire let her mind wander to the new plan she had in mind. Frankly, it seemed a little crazy even to her, but she had weighed her options and decided to go for it.

About five minutes later, Hughes eventually said "Oh, c'mon guys! Lighten up!" He never had been the type to like things to be too serious for too long when they didn't need to be. He fished in his uniform for something. "Look, look!"

Ed only glanced over, but Claire was instantly standing up to look at the picture Hughes had pulled out. Elysia was riding an orange scooter, wearing a pink dress and making a peace sign at the camera.

"Elysia can ride a tricycle now," Hughes bragged. "And she follows me wherever I go!" He kissed Elysia's photo.

"Oh my gosh, Maes-san!" she exclaimed. "She's adorable!"

"She is, she is!" Hughes went on. "While you were gone, she even learned how to tie her shoes!"

"Really?" Claire asked excitedly. The first few times Hughes had shown her pictures of his daughter she had been a bit stunned, but after living with his family awhile, she couldn't help but love the little girl. "That's soo cute!"

"Isn't it?" Hughes asked. "She even helped Gracia make cookies the other day!"

"She's getting to be a big girl so fast!"

"I know, right?"

"I bet she's got an even bigger swarm of boys swooning over her than before!"

"Tch," said Hughes, suddenly annoyed. His expression darkened into something somewhat evil. "They aren't worthy. If they don't know their place…"

"You haven't changed at all, Major…" Ed groaned. Then he changed the subject to something more serious. "By the way, you should have told us if you were going to come here."

"Oh, I'm Lieutenant Colonel now," Hughes explained. He pointed to himself proudly, and said, "I do investigations for the military court."

"… Then shouldn't you be in Central City?"

"Yeah, yeah," Claire said. "I want to know that too!"

"It can't be helped," Hughes told them. "All the important people have run away from Central City – " He stopped awkwardly, looking flustered. "Um, no, uh…"

Claire watched him suspiciously. _So there's something we - or perhaps just Ed? – are not supposed to know, eh?_ she thought.

"How are things with the Philosopher's Stone?" Hughes asked Ed quietly, trying to cover up his mistake.

"I think I'm a bit closer to it now," Ed admitted. "I'm looking for a person named Dr. Marcoh, but the Colonel won't tell me anything."

'_The Colonel won't tell me anything?'_ Claire wondered. Well, that was interesting. That implied that Ed thought that Mustang did know something about Dr. Marcoh after all – she hadn't picked up on that while Ed was asking him about the man, but Ed knew the Colonel a lot better than she did.

"Maybe he really doesn't know," Hughes told him as Claire glanced towards the owner of the shadow that was now looming over them.

"No, I'm sure that guy is hiding something…"

"Did you just say Marcoh?" Brigadier General Basque Grand asked. "Are you talking about the runaway?"

_A runaway…?_ Claire listened intently.

"Six years ago, many alchemists were gathered at the rebellion in the East, but Marcoh ran away from the battlefield before the battle ended. He has been missing ever since."

"The rebellion in the East eh…" Hughes muttered.

"The Ishvallan Rebellion?" Claire asked, accidentally speaking her thoughts outloud. She wanted to know – she wanted to know more about why Doctor Marcoh had fled. Maybe there was a clue there –

"Yes," the man confirmed. "Now I must leave."

"Wai —" Claire began, but the man was already quite a ways away from them. She wanted to ask him more but… asking too much would draw attention to her interest in the Rebellion. _Tch… I missed my chance_, she thought, frustrated.

Ed suddenly stood up from the table. "I'm going to go find the Colonel," he said and walked towards the exit.

* * *

><p>"<em>There's something I need to find out."<em>

That's what Claire had told him when he asked why a child like her wanted to join the military.

Although Claire had stayed in the cafeteria with him, Hughes had noticed that she seemed a bit preoccupied once the Brigadier General had left. Hughes watched the girl play with the metal cast puzzle she had taken out of her bag awhile earlier. Besides eating her lollipops, that game seemed to be an activity she played a lot when she was deep in thought. He had caught her playing it multiple times when she was investigating cases with him. _She's still a child_, Hughes thought almost sadly, _and yet,_ _she involves herself in adult affairs – just like Ed_.

"You know, Claire," Hughes began, smiling gently. The amber-eyed girl glanced up from her puzzle to see what he had to say. "You're an inch taller than Ed now."

"Eh? Really?" she asked.

"Haha, yeah," he reached across the table to ruffle her hair slightly. The girl glared at him slightly, and Hughes remembered that she didn't like being treated like a child.

"I'm not a kid anymore, Maes-san," Claire pouted. But as she said that, she looked just like your average, silly kid, playing with a logic puzzle. "I'm fifteen! Sheesh."

"Yeah, sorry," Hughes grinned apologetically. "Maes-san" – it was an unspoken compromise between the both of them. She had lived with his family for several years now, and she was almost like a daughter to him. But he knew that "father" was a term that he would never ask her to refer to him with.

Claire placed her puzzle on the table, evidently putting off whatever she was thinking about until later. "…Ed got mad at me," she said suddenly.

"Huh?" He hadn't been expecting her to say something so far off-topic from what they were talking about before.

"Ed got mad at me when I told him I joined the military," she repeated, more firmly. "But he joined the military too! He doesn't have the right to yell at me for it! At least I picked a branch where I don't have to go off to fight wars for the state!"

"I don't think he meant badly," Hughes told her. He knew where she was coming from, but he could also see where Ed was coming from – Claire was always going to get mad if you told her she was wrong about doing something, but she did have a point in saying that her choice of military section was better than Ed's. At the same time, though, he could also see that Ed simply didn't want his friends in danger. Even in the investigations department, there was danger.

"Still, though! He even sabotaged my assignment in Xenotime," she complained. "It's not any of his business why I joined the military, anyways."

"Claire, he was probably just worried about you," Hughes told her, but he doubted it would do any good. He knew very well that Claire would refuse to even try to understand Ed's position. She could be like that sometimes. She hated being the one in the wrong.

"…Then he shouldn't have been so mean!" she said, confirming Hughes' thoughts.

"Yes, yes," he sighed in resignation, giving up on trying to convince her further. There was no point, really, if she was going to be so stubborn. He had known that she would be that way in the first place though.

Claire swirled her spoon around her now empty cup of hot chocolate. "So anyways," she said, "what's going on in Central?"

"Well…" Hughes began. He didn't really want to tell her, but generally, it was better to just let her satisfy her curiosity than to feed it by refusing to tell her. "That guy," he said in a low voice, "Scar, has been murdering state alchemists right and left, so it's dangerous there."

"Hmm…" she said thoughtfully. "I take it that you won't put me on that case then?"

"No, I'm dealing with it personally." She knew that he generally avoided putting her on overly-dangerous cases because he knew that she was weak combatively.

"Alright," she said. "Is it alright if I take a vacation for a little while then?"

"A vacation?" Hughes asked in surprise. Claire was not the type to typically ask for such a thing.

"Yeah…" she answered. "There's something I want to do."

"… Is it a secret?"

"It is."

Hughes considered Claire's request carefully, but he knew it would probably be useless to tell her no. If he told her no, then she'd just find another way to do what she was doing. That was just how she was… and besides, if she would give up after simply being told, "No," then she wouldn't be in the military in the first place.

But most importantly, he knew that she would never ask for a vacation unless it was to do something of particularly great significance to her that she couldn't do while being tied down to the military. It was probably related to the reason she joined the military in the first place. From something like that, he wouldn't hold her back.

As an adult, it was good to protect the children, but it wasn't good to be so protective that he held her back from accomplishing her goals.

His job was to watch over, not to restrain.

"…Fine, fine," he relented, allowing himself a crooked grin. "Don't be gone for too long though."

She smiled. "Don't worry. I won't."

"And next time you come to Central – when it's safer of course – make sure to come take a picture with Gracia and Elysia, alright?"

"Yeah, okay," she said, picking up her bag to leave. "Tell Mustang about my vacation for me!"

"Alright."

She slung her bag over her shoulder before pausing for a moment. "…By the way, do you know how much first-class train tickets to cost?" she asked.

"Not sure…" he said thoughtfully. Then a thought occurred to him. "Wait, are you leaving now?"

"Yup!" She saluted playfully. "See you later!" As she ran out of the cafeteria, Hughes sighed... Ed and Al would definitely be mad when they found out she left without telling them.

* * *

><p>Claire walked out of East Headquarters, fully prepared this time. She had made sure that she packed some water bottles, a hat, some deodorant and some candy that wouldn't melt in the heat.<p>

The city of choice for her vacation: Liore.

Although she definitely wanted to know more about Dr. Marcoh, for now her best bet was to let Ed and Al hunt him down. They were perfectly capable of investigating the man on their own, so she would let them do that. Right now, there was something else she wanted to do, something she couldn't do without temporarily getting rid of the military.

She was going to figure out what and who exactly Envy and his comrades were.

But more importantly…

She was going to find to find out what they knew about the Philosopher's Stone.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's note:<strong> Yay! After warring with the document manager, I have updated~ *sparkly eyes*

So anyways, I shall now be breaking off from the main plot a bit ;D I hope you'll like the next arc I have planned.

If my next update is late, it is probably because I am watching Brotherhood (no, I haven't seen it yet). I want to read the manga too, but I really like hearing the music and listening to the voices in the anime. But in any case, Envy will be appearing a lot after this, and I think it would be good to mix Brotherhoood Envy's personality with 2003 Envy's personality.

I drew another picture of Claire. Link is on my profile (as usual).

**Since this is my first super-fluffy chapter, what was your favorite part of the fluff?**

Thanks for reading~


	10. Liore 5: Surface of the Lunacy

Disclaimer: FMA belongs to Arakawa Hiromu.

Note: In the 2003 anime, the homunculi heal a lot faster than they do in Brotherhood, and they also appear to be more resistant to pain. As I said before, I will, for the most part, be following the 2003 anime.

Ah, also, this chapter is a bit... I dunno if I'd say darker, but definitely a lot more insane than my previous ones. I blame Envy o_o

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><p><em>Recap: Ed, Al, and Claire arrive at East Headquarters. While Ed and Claire are reporting to Mustang, the Fuhrer arrives, and they find out that East Headquarters will temporarily be replacing Central Headquarters. Later on, Ed and Claire are talking to Hughes. Ed leaves after hearing some information on Marcoh from Brigadier General Basque Grand, but Claire continues to talk to Hughes, telling him that she wants a vacation but not where she's going. Shortly thereafter, Claire leaves for Liore.<em>

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><p><strong>Chapter 10 ~ Surface of the Lunacy<strong>

Thousands and thousands of those foolish humans were staring at him, their hands in prayer to his holiness, none of them able to see the madness consuming them. Consuming them like a starved, rabid beast, unrestrained, finally slaking its hunger.

Their gullibility – how laughable!

"God has given us a trial!" he exclaimed.

They were entranced by a web of lies; they walked into traps so easily. They were like insects drawn irresistibly towards the sweet, alluring scent of a Venus fly trap.

They were just waiting to be eaten.

"Evil heathens are trying to disturb our faith by spreading absurd rumors, and the military is planning to oppress us!"

He suppressed the wicked grin threatening to curl upon his wretched lips, but he was unable to prevent the lunacy from reaching his eyes. How he loved watching the beast tear their sanity to shreds.

"But we shall not give in!"

Not one pair of eyes strayed from him as each human greedily drank his every word.

"Take up arms and rise, in the name of our almighty sun god, Leto!"

The beast's jagged teeth dripped with the humans' morals as it swallowed the last of them.

"That's right!" the crowd roared. "We've got the Sun God Leto on our side!"

Morals which had once been white were now the deep crimson.

"Shoot the heathens!"

Crimson, like the blood that would soon be gushing from the fresh wounds carved in their bodies.

"Hey! Don't let him trick you!" a nonbeliever cried out.

Crimson, like the blood that would soon paint beautiful flowers across the sand and walls of the city.

"That bastard has been lying to us!"

Crimson, like the blood that would seep from beneath the door of a child's bedroom.

"Shut up! You guys are agents of the heathens, aren't you?"

_Yes, yes!_ his mind urged in excitement. _Kill! _

The fighting broke out – one man stabbed another, and soon every man was at his own brother's throat.

_Slaughter!_

In the distance, a child wailed among the chaos. She slouched down against the ruined wall, hiding her eyes from the scene in front of her. The humans she had once called her friends, her brothers, her sisters, her family, were now nothing more than uncontrollable monsters.

_Dance, you humans, with your murderous rage – your hatred._

This time, Envy didn't bother stop himself, the psychotic cackle escaping from his mouth. It wasn't like anyone would hear him after all.

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><p><strong>The next morning…<strong>

Unlike the last time she had come to the city of Liore, it was quiet. Sure, it was still pretty early in the day, but it was odd. Generally, there should be at least a few people milling around, chatting or buying goods.

There was no one.

Claire tentatively walked through the seemingly deserted city. A smell of smoke lingered in the air; long shadows reached out from every building. Houses that had looked so nice before were now in shambles. Deep gashes, perhaps from blades, had been made in their walls, and shattered fragments of glass were scattered about in the sand like sprinkles on a cupcake. She had peeked into one of the houses just awhile earlier, only to see that the inside looked no better than the outside – worse, in fact.

The second she had gotten even close to that house, though, she flung her hand over her nose in disgust. A wretched, putrid repugnant odor saturated the air inside the house. That stench – she recognized it.

She rushed over to the door of the house and flung it open.

Splinters from the smashed kitchen table were splayed across the concrete floor. Books, utensils, photographs – they were all thrown across the floor haphazardly. Nearly all the furniture was either overturned, broken, or both.

The deep gashes were not only in the walls here, but also in the floor. Gently, she ran her fingers over them, wondering what had happened to cause them. With only the light from a few windows, it was difficult to see for sure, but she could also almost make out what appeared to be bullet holes in some places. Clearly, there had been a fight of some sort – a brutal, merciless fight. She didn't need a lot of light to see – or smell – the thick blood stains in the room.

The rest of the houses and buildings were probably just like this one on the inside.

In the time since she and the Elrics had left Liore… what had happened? A fist of dread clenched in her chest.

Her eyes trailed the path of the blood stains, and she willed her feet to follow it, even though, in the back of her mind, she could easily guess what they led to. Unease bubbled in her stomach, and her hands grew clammy with cold sweat. Each step she took echoed ominously off the walls, and the irony reek of blood only grew stronger.

Her eyes landed on a pair of limp feet, and her heart thumped heavily in her chest. She forced her eyes to stray farther up.

A bloodied corpse.

She stumbled backwards, her breath catching in her chest, even though she had expected this sight.

It was just a dead body. He was already dead.

Swallowing heavily, she reapproached the body. Whoever the murderer was, he must have either had a grudge of some sort or he really loved killing viciously, judging by the state of the corpse. Multiple slash wounds had been made across him, and he had been stabbed various times as well. His death had probably been slow and painful, caused by blood loss. Although she couldn't say what had caused this to happen, it had happened recently.

The body hadn't yet started to smell, and it was still stiff from rigor mortis.

It was only a rough estimate, but it was safe to say that he had been killed just yesterday.

Claire shook her head to rid herself of the images as she walked towards the center of the town. The closer she got to the center, the more evidence of the fighting remained. After Ed had publicized Cornello-sama's fraud, the public outcry must have been enormous. It was highly likely that civil war had broken out here once more, and there had been some sort of battle the day before… in which case the lack of people was because they were all in hiding or resting after such a large-scale conflict. Whether yesterday was the first day of the fighting or if it was just one day of many, she couldn't say.

"Hey," a cold voice said as a heavy hand clapped on her shoulder. Claire turned around and found herself facing a stern-faced young man dressed in blue – a soldier.

"Is there something that you need…?" Claire asked, trying to figure out why the military was stationing soldiers in Liore. Soldiers, in her opinion, were like ants. If there was one, there were many more.

"Where are you going?" His eyes, azure in color, stared down at her icily.

"Um…" she began, smiling at the man innocently while she silently cursed the lack of people. She had specifically dressed in the Liorean-style garb she had bought on her last trip here, but she stood out anyways because there wasn't anyone else around.

"Answer."

At this point, Claire couldn't help but think rather irritably, _this man is too serious for his own good – the word "fun" probably isn't even in his mental dictionary_, but she recognized that she was in some sort of unknown trouble with him. Her eyes were quickly darting around the area, as she tried to think of a location she could give him.

Her eyes landed on the large pillars that could be seen from throughout the entire town. "My mother asked me to go to the church," she answered.

"I'm sorry, but I can't allow you to go there," the soldier said.

"Ehh? But my mother said–"

"I'm going to have to ask you to come with me." He grabbed her wrist with a firm, almost commandeering, hold.

"B-but…" Claire said nervously, trying to buy time as she weighed her options. She still didn't know what this guy wanted to do with some random civilian, but it probably had something to do with the conflict. "I shouldn't go with strangers…"

"Come with me," he repeated.

She had two options: follow him and get away from the military later or escape now. If she chose to follow him, though, she couldn't guarantee how long the military would hold her in custody, and she didn't want them to know who she was. If they knew who she was, it would defeat the whole purpose of going on a "vacation." She wouldn't be able to investigate as freely then.

_Tch_, she thought, looking the man over. He was physically stronger than her, and he had several pistols at his side. _But escaping from him now will be easier than escaping from the whole military later…_

If she had to gamble, it would be better to choose the best odds, right?

"…Alright," she spoke. Just slightly, the man's grip loosened on her wrist. But that was enough.

She wrenched her arm from his grasp as the man cursed under his breath. He was already reaching for one of his pistols. Immediately, she rounded the nearest corner so that she was temporarily out of the man's line of sight.

She hadn't lied to him about her destination – she was headed towards the church.

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><p>For every mêlée, there was a time of rest, of silence, afterwards.<p>

It was these periods of recovery that bored Envy to no ends. It wasn't that he didn't enjoy watching their agitation and paranoia as they could do nothing but wait for the next clash to begin (in fact, he quite enjoyed aggravating it), but at this moment in time, he simply had nothing to do. Even though he was dutifully fulfilling his job as the High Priest, no one had even arrived yet at the church this morning. It was a shame, really, that the fighting from the day before had died down. Well, it had been forced to die down – the military shot every rebel it could find. Mercilessly. Envy smirked.

It had been quite entertaining to watch.

Sitting down, Envy leaned his back against one of the church's pews. Since there were no people around, he hadn't even bothered to transform out of his cute form. And if someone, by chance, did see him, perhaps he could kill them? It would be nice to see them freak out. Humans were so bad at masking – and controlling – their emotions.

But it was because of this that they were so fun to manipulate. The statues were nothing more than carved hunks of rock, tributes to something that didn't even exist. He couldn't believe that humans were naïve enough to believe in something so obviously fake, but he supposed it was a sign of their desperation. He almost laughed – humans were such weak, puny little creatures that they needed to believe in some supreme being who they could whine to whenever they had problems. Who they could lean on mentally, but who actually wouldn't (and couldn't) do anything for them.

How foolish.

Envy grinned slightly, before resting his feet on the bench in front of him and dropping his head back to examine the church's ceiling.

He let his thoughts wander to Lust and Gluttony, who had left Liore shortly after the fighting had ended. Gluttony was just Gluttony – mindless, following Lust with an almost dog-like loyalty. Lust, on the other hand, always seemed to be somewhat lost in her own thoughts. She was somewhat odd like that.

A muffled shooting from outside disrupted his thoughts.

_Hm?_ he wondered, as he transformed himself into the fraudulent priest. He had suddenly come up with an even better plan to mess with the humans' heads than staying in his cute form. He stood up, smiling his benevolent smile while heavy footsteps approached the door. Envy smoothly dodged several bullets as they flew through the wood of the church's doors.

The doors swung open, and swung shut. A dark-haired girl raced into the room, sliding to the floor in front of the first row of church pews.

Envy's eyes narrowed in suspicion. It was that military spy, Claire, from awhile ago.

Glancing over at the girl, Envy saw that she wasn't injured, but that was probably by mere chance, judging by the cracks of gunfire following her. Her face was flushed, and her breathing was heavy and ragged as she stared at the floor for a moment, trying to regain herself. She needed to recover as much as possible while she was shielded from the bullets by the various rows of pews that were now behind her. Envy could tell that she knew this was only a temporary respite – she was still alert, like a rabbit that was briefly out of sight from the fox chasing it. Her amber eyes were hastily darting around the church, probably looking for possible escape routes, when they rested on the form of the High Priest. He could see the fear and recognition in them, but he could also tell that she was already analyzing the situation. She was sharp.

The doors burst open again; this time, the entrant was a soldier holding his pistol poised to attack.

_Haha_, Envy thought amusedly, _this is getting to be quite the show_. He walked towards the aisle between the pews. "What brings you here, soldier?" he asked in the High Priest's voice.

"I have orders," the man said simply. "You and the girl who just ran in here – you can resist, but then I will be forced to shoot."

"Did the girl do something to you?" Cornello-Envy asked. He gave no indication as to where she was hiding.

"She said she was going to the church. She is your follower," he answered. The man's face was stoic; he had been trained well. "A rebel."

"Is that to say there is an execution order on all my followers?"

"There is an execution order on all those who have helped to create this conflict – including you."

The man fired without waiting for a response.

This time, rather than dodging the bullet, he chose to stand there and let it hit him. The man was apparently a bad shot – the bullet only hit him in the arm – but the effect was plenty. Even though the man had previously shown no obvious changes in his expression, his expression was now filled with horror as he watched the wound he had just made heal right in front of his eyes.

"Wha—"the man began, but Envy cut him off.

"Killing me might prove rather difficult," Cornello-Envy told him, still smiling. "I am, after all, protected by the Sun God Leto."

"Wh-what the hell are you?" the man screamed, his face contorted with terror. The deafening sound of the bullets drowned out the sound of the bullet shells clattered to the floor. If one bullet hadn't been enough, then perhaps five would be! Envy could feel blood soaking his clothes, but he stood there, unflinching, as he took pleasure in watching the soldier. Getting hurt wasn't fun, but the spectacle of this man's reactions was too priceless to pass up. He didn't once allow his expression to waver from the priest's typical smile. Meanwhile, the man's eyes were wide, his skin already becoming damp with sweat, his body slightly shaking.

He looked ridiculous.

"I am the son of Leto," Cornello-Envy said amusedly. Such obvious lies he was spouting! The absurdity was comical, but the human had to believe him. How else could he be still talking to him after he got shot in the head?

"M-monster!" the man shrieked. His voice was so high-pitched – like a little girl's. He tried to shoot again, but no bullets came. The pistol was empty.

"Monster, huh…?" he asked, frowning. "Rather rude, aren't you?"

The man screamed, his eyes frantic, and tossed his pistol aside. Grabbing another pistol from his waist, the man began the rain of bullets once more.

This guy sure couldn't take a joke.

"You know," Cornello-Envy eventually pointed out after the man's second pistol ran out of bullets, "if it didn't work the first time or the second, why would it work the third?"

The man's eyes widened further, his arms shaking as his pistol fell to the floor. The blood drained from his face – Envy doubted that the man even remembered his original purpose in coming here at this point. Damn, this guy was too weak-minded. Envy would have liked to play with him more, but he was already in this state. Most people would have lasted at least a little while longer…

"Leto will punish you for sinning against God."

The man let out a hysterical laugh, frantic eyes unable to leave Cornello-Envy's figure. "This is a dream… this is a dream…" the man was muttering.

Perhaps it was because this man was alone. When there was only one, he didn't have any one to back him up. Mob mentality was a powerful thing, but with only one, there was no power. Only weakness.

"That's right," Envy smiled sickeningly sweet. Calmly, he walked towards the man with his hands behind his back as if he was going on his daily stroll. "Reality's your worst nightmare."

The man's mouth moved but said nothing. Envy walked up to him, so that he was now standing right in front of the man, and picked up the man's pistol. Confusion flashed through his panic-stricken eyes for a moment but Envy could tell – the man was doubting his own common sense. Envy raised the pistol to the man's forehead. This soldier was clearly not someone who was cut out to be in the military, but it didn't matter to Envy. But so what? As if Envy cared about that.

The soldier's eyes never left the pistol, tears now trickling down his ghastly face.

Envy pulled the trigger. "Boom," he spoke, his own violet eyes glittering with pleasure at the effect of his words. The man himself knew that there were no bullets in the pistol, but he was so afraid of this being that he didn't understand that he had forgotten that fact.

The man sweaty hands struggled to feel his face, as if checking to see that he was still there. He seemed to be unable to believe he was still alive. He collapsed to the floor, deranged giggling escaping from his lips. He sat there for a moment, before standing up once more, wobbling on his unsteady feet. Taking one last look at the smiling priest, he fled, stumbling and staggering like a drunken ape. He was reduced to being nothing more than a traumatized animal. Envy didn't even bother to chase after him and kill him. The man was too pitiful, too pathetic.

The best part was that when he ran back to tell everyone his story, they would all think he was delusional. Humans did not keep standing after getting shot so many times, after all.

Envy smirked.

What they didn't know was that he wasn't human.

Silence filled the church.

"…He's gone right?" the girl's voice suddenly asked.

"Yes, he's gone. Don't worry," Cornello-Envy spoke calmly as he walked in her direction. When he reached her, he crouched down with his arms hanging over his knees so that he was around eye level with her as she sat in front of the pew. She eyed him suspiciously, as if she was wondering if he wasn't going to be the next person to attack her. "Who would have thought that you'd run here when you were in trouble?" he asked.

"Church's are supposed to be sanctuaries even in battle," she said, her back leaning against the pew, her arms wrapped around her legs. She relaxed slightly, gazing up towards the ceiling, since he didn't appear to be taking out any weapons. He could tell that her shoulders were still tense and her eyes alert though. "Apparently, the military doesn't follow that rule," she grumbled.

_No, why would they?_ Envy asked mentally, silently scoffing. _That would be so stupid._ Outwardly, he said nothing, resisting the urge to roll his eyes.

"So anyways," she went on, sighing, as she brushed herself off and stood up, "care to explain how you're still in power?"

Envy raised his eyebrows, also choosing to stand. If she was standing, then he was going to stand too. There was no way that this stupid human was going to look down on him. But _damn_ she recovered quickly after getting shot at. He sighed disappointedly. That was fine though, he supposed. Since she already knew that Cornello was a fraud, he could play with her some. A wolfish grin spread across his face.

"Well?" she pressed impatiently, a frown marring her face. Upon seeing the grin, she seemed to tense up slightly, shifting uncomfortably. He wondered if she had guessed that he wasn't really Cornello yet.

"Do you really want to know, Girlie?" he taunted tantalizingly. His eyes sparked dangerously.

Her amber eyes widened, then narrowed with suspicion. "…You're not Cornello-sama."

"You're still referring to him with 'sama?'" Envy laughed.

Recognition flashed across her face. "You're Envy, aren't you?"

Envy frowned, tilting his head to the side as he regarded her with interest. While she had seen his cute form, she shouldn't know his name. The only name she ought to know him by was Yven. Unless…

"My, my," Envy cooed. He transformed back into his cute form, his green hair lifting in the air before settling into its typical spikes. "Does this mean you were awake when I dumped you in those dungeons?"

She glared at him apprehensively.

He smirked triumphantly. "I'll take that as a yes." She deserved a few points for outwitting him there, he decided. He hadn't noticed that she had been awake. He shrugged. "So, why are you back?" _Perhaps she can be of some use to Dante-sama's plans_, he thought devilishly. "Are you another one who wants to make the Philosopher's Stone?"

"Make it?" she asked, puzzled. Her doe-shaped eyes blinked, round with childlike curiosity.

"Well, yeah," he said, raising an eyebrow. It seemed obvious. "You're sharp enough to have figured out that we know something about it. Otherwise, why would you have come back?"

"You're right that I figured that out, but…" she started, her voice trailing off slightly. She cupped her chin in her hand thoughtfully, gazing absent-mindedly at the ceiling. "…I don't want to make one." She shrugged, somewhat aloof.

_Wait, what?_ Envy thought, startled. He snorted. What sort of nonsense was that?

She placed her hands on her hips, offended by his disbelief. "I'm just investigating it and looking for some guy called Hohenheim-san."

_Hohenheim._

The word was a spark, his hatred, oil. Black flames engulfed his rationality, instantly devouring it.

_That bastard._

His eyes, dangerous slits, were both frozen and scalding at once. He hissed, "You're looking for _him_?" his words dripping with barely restrained fury. It took all his self-control not to hit something, break something, destroy something. His fists clenched, teeth gritting, shoulders trembling slightly.

"…I am," she said hesitantly.

Suddenly, he was overtaken by the irrepressible urge to laugh. He opened his mouth, letting insane peals of laughter to escape. Ludicrous – the idea that this girl could actually find that bastard. In all these hundreds of years, not even he, Envy, had succeeded in finding the man. And this human thought she could do it?

"What's so funny?" the human girl demanded warily.

He stopped laughing, anger contorting his expression once more. Envy growled, "Someone like you…" Bitter, acidic resentment saturated his words. "…Will never find that bastard."

"…And how do you know that?" she inquired, backing away from him. She was afraid, afraid of him. For every step she took away, Envy took a step closer.

"If he could be found that easily," he began, his voice shaking with anger, "I would have found him years ago!" Envy knew he wasn't thinking about what he was saying anymore. It was as if he was seeing everything through a red filter. Yes – if he had been able to find that bastard, Hohenheim would already be nothing more than a broken skeleton, killed by none other than Envy.

She tried to take another step back, but her back was already against the wall. Her eyes flickering around her surroundings for a possible escape, but Envy knew very well that there weren't any.

Finding no escape, her eyes returned to him. "I – I have a lead on him," she said. Her voice was scared but unwavering.

Envy's eyes narrowed. A lead? On that bastard? She was lying. "Why don't you tell me about that lead then?" he sneered in her face.

"…It's his list of contacts," she said nervously. She didn't like his close proximity to her – it was making her uncomfortable. "I found it when I was reading the research data in the Elrics' house."

"You'll die if you're just making that up, human," Envy snarled viciously. He had never been able to get any leads on the man, and Dante-sama had long-since given up searching for him, instead deciding to wait for him to return to her.

Envy watched as her eyes widened and her gaze fearfully turned towards the ground. He grinned. Smugly, he asked, "Hm?"

"…Nash," she said quietly. Then she met his gaze again. "Nash Tringham." This time, the girl spoke more assuredly. "You should know him. He's one of the people on that list."

Nash Tringham – Envy recognized the name. It was the name of that man who researching the Philosopher's Stone in some former mining town… but that man didn't become Dante's pawn until after he'd already learned a lot about the Stone from Hohenheim. Envy didn't know how she knew that he knew the man, but it didn't matter.

It was proof enough that she wasn't lying. This girl – she was searching for Hohenheim and Dante-sama wasn't.

In that case, he'd make good use of her.

Moving closer to her, he whispered in her ear, "I'll make you a deal then, Girlie." She didn't flinch, but he knew she could the dangerous tone in his voice. "I'll let you live. In exchange, you're going to help me find that bastard."

She nodded wordlessly, knowing that she didn't have any choice but to accept.

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><p><strong> Author's note:<strong> ENVY APPEARED ENVY APPEARED ENVY APP- / /shot

...(yeah, anyways...)

I finished watching Brotherhood. Ling and Greedling are awesome. I love the OSTs xD Mei and her panda cat are adorable. I like the extra details on the plot and the characters in Brotherhood, but I still prefer the 2003 anime overall. You can probably tell that Envy's insanity from Brotherhood has leaked into this chapter a bit though.  
>(...it probably doesn't help that I was listening to the Higurashi no Naku Koro ni OSTs when I wrote this. Lol xD)<p>

**I think soldier dude totally overreacted, but my friends have informed me that he's fine and they really like the insanity. I have a version of this chapter where he's less insane... I could switch it. I dunno though. Should I? o_o And as a whole, did you enjoy this chapter? Was it interesting/intense/suspenseful?** This chapter was a lot different from my others, so I'd love to have feedback. The story will get more interesting from here on in I believe ;D

Also... on a random note, does anyone know if/when Envy's real name is revealed in the 2003 anime? I could have sworn it was in the last two episodes, but I can't find it D;

Thanks to reviewers, alerters, favoriters, etc, and a big thanks to Cookie Krisp for helping me edit~ Hope you enjoyed the chapter ;)


	11. Liore 6: Wading into Lunacy's Waves

Disclaimer: FMA belongs to Arakawa Hiromu.

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><p><em>Recap: After arriving in Liore, Claire is chased into the Church by a soldier who has been ordered to secure (or shoot) all possible followers of Letoism. In the Church, she runs into Envy, who toyswith the soldier until he flees from the homunculus. Envy then confronts Claire about whether she wants to make the Philosopher's Stone or not, and Claire says that while she is not trying to make it, but she is investigating it as well as investigating Hohenheim. Envy loses his head after hearing Hohenheim's name mentioned and makes a deal with her - he won't kill her, but in exchange, she has to help him find Hohenheim.<em>

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><p><strong>Chapter 11 ~ Wading into Lunacy's Waves<strong>

_Huge shelves of books lined each wall of the room. Each shelf held all sorts of alchemy books – some thin, some thick, some hardcover and professionally bound, others simply journals bound with string. The first day she had walked into this room, she had gazed wonderingly at all the information that was stored there, like a child suddenly surrounded by walls of candy. There were so many books to choose from; there was so much to learn. _

_On that first day, she had scanned the backs of all the books, trying to figure out which she wanted to read first. Some of the books were so new, they looked as if they had never been opened, and yet, others were so torn and yellowed that they seemed to be several centuries old. She plucked one of the journals off the shelf, and carefully began to turn the crinkled pages in her hands. Just slightly, she felt her nose crinkle at the moldy reek that immediately penetrated the room the second she opened the journal. Each page seemed so delicate and fragile as if it would crumble to dust in her fingers, and the handwriting was in old script, almost impossible for her to read._

_The little girl's brow furrowed as she squinted at the page with her amber eyes, trying desperately to read it. She didn't have all that much knowledge of the old style of writing yet – it seemed so complicated and unnecessary to her. She added ancient handwriting to her list of things she needed to study as she finally managed to decipher a fragment of sentence:_

"_A homunculus," the page read, "is a man-made human that…"_

_The ink that made up the rest of the sentence had bled in a coin-shaped mark, as if the writer had been crying as he wrote. Even if she had known ancient script, the page was almost entirely illegible. The only other words she could make out the page:_

"_Soulless."_

"_Forbidden."_

"_Sin."_

_Everything else was smudged, faded, or bled._

"_Claire-chan!" Winry's voice called from somewhere else in the house, interrupting the girl's thoughts._

_The little girl looked up from the book, closed it, and hastily shoved it back in the shelf, glancing around somewhat guiltily even though she knew Winry wasn't anywhere nearby. She was supposed to help the Rockbells take care of the Elric's house while they were away, apparently learning alchemy. Instead, she was snooping through their books. Pinako-san would get angry at her for that._

"_I'm coming!" she called back after quietly exiting the room. She would explore it further the next time she came here._

_It was, after all, Hohenheim-san's study. Where else better to investigate the man?_

_It was several weeks later when the contact list that Ed had used to mail letters to Hohenheim's acquaintances when his mother was dying fell out of one of the books she was reading._

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><p><strong>The next day…<strong>

Envy grinned smugly as he walked towards the abandoned building that he had taken as his residence as of late. It was on the edge of town, and even now with the ongoing civil war, there weren't a lot of people there. Messing with humans was fun, but he didn't want to be stuck with them 24/7.

Annoyance flickered across his face as he remembered that his human-free residence was no longer human-free because of that foolish human girl. She had turned the tables on him awfully fast after she agreed to his deal. At first, she had been silent, feeling threatened by him like she should, but then all of a sudden, she relaxed, lightly slapping her face a few times.

A bright grin crossed her face, like that of a triumphant child.

"…I need a place to stay," she spoke, still smiling in a way that Envy found very disturbing, given the current circumstances. Envy's eyes narrowed. She was up to something that he knew he wasn't going to like. Humans only smiled like that when they thought they were on to something.

"Yeah, and?" Envy asked in a bored and entirely uninterested tone as he stared at his fingernails. He had gone to lounge on one of the church pews shortly after she took the deal.

"Let me stay with you." Her tone was serious.

It took Envy a moment to digest that before he nearly gagged – what absurd notion was that? It was as ridiculous as the idea of a mouse asking to live with a cat. Maybe this girl was smart, but there was clearly something wrong in her head. Grinning a grin just as wide as the girl's, Envy said, "Yes, of course…" His voice trailed off.

The girl's face lit up, and she clapped her hands together. "Wonderf—"

"Hell no," he sneered, shrugging arrogantly. "Why the hell would I ever let a pathetic human like you order me around?"

She frowned, giving him a fierce look. "Because it's in your best interests."

Envy raised his eyebrows. His best interests eh? He doubted she was only proposing this idea for him, and he hardly wanted to be stuck babysitting a human. Raising his hands as if she were a hopeless case, he scoffed, "I didn't realize you were so eager for danger, Girlie. You shoulda said so earlier, you know." He smirked.

"I'm not a freak like you," the girl returned sharply.

"That's right," Envy said as a wolfish grin spread across his face. The girl tensed up at the slithering tone of his voice. "Unlike you losers," he sneered as he gestured towards Claire, "I'm a homunculus."

She stared at him for a moment. "A homunculus…" she murmured to herself, her gaze shifting to the floor.

"What?" Envy asked, sulking slightly. "No reaction?" He had hoped that she'd call him a liar or something and have some pathetically overdramatic reaction. "Tch." He shook his head. "You're no fun."

She haughtily put her hands on her hips. "I'm perfectly fun, thank you very much."

Envy whistled sarcastically. The human girl glared at him reproachfully. It was so easy to rile her up.

"Hmph."

For some reason, this reaction annoyed him. He had just told her that he wasn't human, and she wasn't acting the way a human should react to that. "Hm..?" he asked dangerously. "Is Little Red Riding Hood not afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?"

"Nope, she's not." She hadn't detected the threat lurking in his tone; her words were stated matter-of-factly as she looked at him with her amber, doe-shaped eyes.

Envy's violet eyes narrowed with ire; his fists clenched. Humans should fear him – he was Envy; he was a homunculus; he was above them.

"Well, I suppose that's not entirely true," she said, correcting herself. "I am afraid of you."

The ire dissipated slightly, and his hands relaxed. _Good_, his mind said, _that's how things should be, you pathetic human._

"It's something like choosing the better of two bad options," she continued thoughtfully. "I could do everything on my own here and get myself killed by a crazy soldier or something, or I could stay with you. You're dangerous, but I'm useful to you, so you won't kill me. And you can prevent me from getting killed by crazy people."

The memory of the scene was suddenly blurred by Envy's anger. His muttered curses were the only sound filling this desolate part of the city. He despised the fact that the girl was right – a corpse couldn't help him find that bastard.

She had been able to turn his obviously lopsided deal to one that was in her favor.

The homunculus regained his calm though as he remembered that, in the end, he still had the upper hand. Envy chuckled evilly. That human girl didn't know what she was getting into, making a deal with him. Even if she regretted the deal later, he wasn't going to let her escape from it. She was going to find that bastard whether she liked it or not. She was his puppet now.

_But on that note_, Envy wondered, _why is she back in Liore?_ If the military had sent her back here, the soldier wouldn't have been shooting at her. The military didn't have a reason to send her back either… Envy frowned, puzzled. _Is she here of her own volition then…?_

Out of the corner of his eye, Envy noticed a lone child watching him from the shadows of a nearby building. As Envy glanced towards him, he shrunk back, as if that would prevent him from being noticed.

What was she interested in that brought her back to Liore on her own?

Although the homunculus was wearing the face of an average Liorean, the child could sense that Envy was something much more dangerous. On the occasion, human children would notice that. The adults may have had more knowledge about what was dangerous, but they relied too much on that knowledge to make their judgments. Children could sometimes – but not always – tell things by instinct.

And for that matter… why was she investigating the Philosopher's Stone when she didn't want to make one?

Envy allowed a wolfish grin to slink across his lips as he looked at the child straight on. The child's breath froze, and his small frame trembled. His eyes widened as he saw the insane look in the homunculus' violet eyes, the look of a predator about to snag its prey. He ran, his form eventually engulfed by the darkness of the buildings' shadows.

At least this girl didn't seem to be as boring as the rest of the humans.

The homunculus let the child escape, but not out of mercy. Soon, Envy knew, the fresh conflict he had sparked in town just a short while earlier before coming back here would erupt into a scorching flame, and that flame would engulf everyone in the city – including that child. Occasionally, it would die down to nothing but smoldering ashes, but then all he would have to do was pour some oil on those ashes to set everything ablaze once more.

* * *

><p>Claire stared in the cracked bathroom mirror as she fought with her long hair. It flowed gently over her shoulders and torso now that she had rid it of most of its tangles. When she was younger, Ed had, multiple times, told her to cut her hair because it was impractically long. And each of those times, she had gotten angry with him because she liked it this way – she could style it in more different ways. Besides, she took good care of it, so it was nice and soft, with no split ends. In all honesty, she was quite proud of her hair.<p>

What she was not proud of, though, was that she had woken up extremely late that day with a cherry red, sunburned nose. The unrelenting desert sun had caused her to look like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Her cheeks and shoulders were slightly burnt as well. Sometimes she wished she could get tanned because then she wouldn't sunburn so easily. She sighed, running her brush through her hair once more.

Somehow it was strange how, in one day, she could find a dead body and almost become a dead body herself and then the next day, be sitting here brushing her hair like everything was normal. Generally, her missions weren't terribly dangerous as long as she simply chose to investigate from a safe distance, but this time, she had walked right into the very danger that she usually tried to avoid. She could feel the heavy atmosphere of the town; it was as if chaos was just waiting to engulf the city once more. Nothing was happening now, so it all seemed awfully distant. But it wasn't, and she knew it.

Placing her brush on the dusty wooden table, Claire tied her hair back with a faded pink ribbon and grabbed some makeup from her bag. _I've gotten myself into quite a lot of trouble, haven't I?_ she mused inwardly. She definitely should have checked up on the state of Liore before coming back here, but she hadn't expected another civil war to break out just because the Elrics exposed him as fraudulent.

Something in the back of her mind whispered that she had also played a hand in exposing the scandal, and her gaze guiltily shifted to the ground for a moment. She rested her face in her hands.

_I can't start thinking this way_, she told herself, biting her lip slightly. _I'm stronger than this. I can't let my resolve waver this easily. It's not my fault that the scandal escalated to such proportions. It's not my fault... _

When the thought wouldn't be silenced by simple mental persuasion, she shook her head to force it out of her mind. All that mattered was that she find the truth.

The fifteen-year old girl picked up her eyeliner and carefully began applying it. _No use dwelling on depressing stuff, _she thought optimistically, changing her mental subject to that of her success convincing Envy to let her stay with him.

Claire placed the eyeliner back into her bag and grabbed her mascara. To be blunt, she hadn't expected everything to go so well. Hell, it had taken a lot of acting to feign calmness when she was proposing that idea. She didn't want him to see how afraid of him she actually was – the stronger he knew that fear was, the more he would exploit it. Luckily, she had managed to look confident.

Standing up, Claire dropped her mascara back in her bag and walked into one of the main rooms of the building. The building itself was fairly big, but she and Envy were only making use of the top floor of it since it was less noticeable that people were inhabiting the building that way. Claire looked around the room, trying to find a spot where she wouldn't have the shield her eyes from the sun's intense glare.

The room itself was undeniably plain. Around its edges, there were some old wardrobes and a few folded blankets, suggesting that this had once been someone's bedroom. There was also one other doorway besides the one she was standing in, leading to the stairway that led up to this floor of the building. Musty-smelling curtains, patched-up with holes and slightly mouse-nibbled at the bottom, hung above the windows, but they had little effect. They were far too thin and worn to block out the sun. A single dusty photo frame lay on the floor near the window sill, but there was no picture in it. Whoever the last occupant of this room was, he had removed it before leaving. Judging from the lack of damage, this building hadn't been attacked in this civil war or the previous, but it had probably been abandoned during the first.

Claire walked over to one of the old wardrobes, and opened its doors. As soon as she'd arrived here, she'd checked out all the crevices of the room, and on the top shelf of this particular wardrobe, there was a puzzle box. The dark-haired girl pulled the box out, grabbed one of the dirty blankets, and sat down in the shadiest corner of the room.

When she'd checked out the room earlier, she'd only had a chance to open the slightly grimy cardboard box, but now that she had time, she figured she might as well put it together. Taking the lid off the box, Claire dumped the pieces out onto the blanket and began to flip them all over so that they were right-side up. At a quick glance, she could tell that the puzzle wasn't particularly big, but all the pieces were tiny – it would take awhile to put together. There was no picture on the box to indicate what sort image this puzzle created, so she had to figure it out all on her own. Smiling happily as she wondered about the picture the puzzle would show her, she began piecing it together.

* * *

><p>Just as she had several small groups of the puzzle pieces fitted together, a shadow stood over her. She had heard him walk in the room earlier, but now that he was standing over her, his green-hair falling over his shoulders as he ate an apple, the amber-eyed teen glanced towards him from her position on the floor. Unlike the day before, he didn't seem to be particularly threatening. Instead, his violet eyes simply looked at the puzzle curiously, like those of a bemused child.<p>

"Where'd you get that?" he asked, gesturing towards the puzzle as he took a bite of his apple.

"I found it," Claire answered, frowning as she tried to fit two pieces together but failed. She was surprised that he was actually talking to her (she had expected that he was going to ignore her), but since he didn't seem to be up to anything sneaky, creepy, or sadistic, she paid little attention to him. "Someone left it in one of the wardrobes."

The boy crouched down in front of her so that he could get a closer view of the puzzle. "Is that so?" he asked. "I don't think a puzzle classifies as an article of clothing."

Claire shrugged indifferently. "Maybe he just wanted some place safe to put it."

"I don't see why there's a need to keep one of these things safe," he stated bluntly, as he picked up one of the puzzle pieces and stared at it irritably. "They're worthless."

"How rude," she objected, but not particularly angrily. She was focused more on the puzzle than on him as she tried once more to fit some pieces together. "I like them. They're fun."

"Whatever," Envy said uninterestedly. He glanced at the pieces she was working with and to the other sets of pieces she had managed to assemble. "Hey," he said, pointing towards one of the sets. "Doesn't this go together with this one?"

Claire looked over to see what he was talking about. "Umm…" she mumbled as she attempted to fit them together. "Yeah, it does. Thanks."

In response to her thanks, the green-haired teen said nothing. After standing up, he brushed himself off, threw out his apple core, and went to go stare out the window. Silence overtook the room as the puzzle was gradually beginning to come together. Claire could now see two children sitting on swings. The image wasn't painted like many of the other puzzles she saw; it looked like a child had drawn it with crayons.

Claire fit several more sets of pieces into the puzzle, and the formation of the pieces began to take on the rectangular shape that it was supposed to. She was almost finished – she now held the last piece in her hand.

The stick-figure-like children were smiling, and side-by-side scribbled leafy trees held up the swings the children were sitting on. The sun was a wobbly circle surrounded by crooked orange, yellow, and red lines, and fluffy clouds had been drawn with a bright blue crayon. Claire placed down the last piece right in the center of the puzzle.

The children were holding hands.

Claire couldn't help but smile a bit sadly, finding the childishness of the puzzle cute, but at the same time, thinking that it was ironic how a Liorean child had probably owned this puzzle before – this puzzle that created a picture of tranquility, friendship, and abundance.

Her thoughts were interrupted as she heard Envy croon, "Ah, finally…" as he watched the city below from the window. Something in his voice sent a chill down her spine, and the fifteen-year old turned her gaze towards him to see him grinning as wide as the Cheshire Cat. His eyes danced with insanity.

All of a sudden, an acute shriek pierced the air, soon followed by a gunshot. Then, another scream, but this one was one of agony.

Bullet to flesh, axe to neck. Heads rolling across the blood-soaked earth.

As more screams and shrieks followed, Claire found herself with her knees pulled up to her chest as she covered her ears, wanting to get as far away from them as possible. She knew what each of them meant: death.

Death was the end of the line. As the bullet wound seeped blood onto the dirty ground, your vision blurred and your mind grew foggy. You would never get to see or speak to your loved ones again. You would never get to fulfill your promises to them. Your hazy memories flashed through your mind like the slides of a motion picture.

And then, you ceased to exist.

Claire tried to block out the morbid pictures that were overtaking her imagination as the screaming and gunfire from outside continued. But she knew – she knew that she was part of the military. The military killed people. Even if she had joined a part of it that generally didn't have to kill anyone, it didn't change the facts.

This was why she normally avoided conflicts.

Suddenly, Envy turned away from the window, so that he looking towards her as she hid futilely in the corner. "Hmm…" he said, holding his chin thoughtfully as he looked at her slightly trembling frame. "You haven't seen a lot of death, have you?"

"…What do you mean?" Claire snapped icily.

He smirked, transforming a gun for himself. "Considering your job, you've surely been involved with death before," he said smugly as he pointed the gun at some imaginary person, "but you haven't actually seen a lot of people die." He pretended to shoot, feigning the recoil of his arm. "Isn't that right?"

Like a cacophonous background choir, the shrieks continued.

_Yes_, a voice in Claire's head whispered to her, but she said nothing. She buried her head in her arms, not wanting to hear any more from him or the din outside.

"Pathetic." She didn't have to look up to know that he was looking down at her scornfully. At that moment, she didn't care. Maybe it was pathetic, but it wasn't wrong to hate death.

Suddenly, a muffled voice from outside shouted, "They escaped somewhere, dammit!" The tone was frustrated and angry.

"Shit!" another voice swore loudly. "How the freaking hell are we supposed to stop this goddamn idiotic war if all the catalysts keep escaping?"

A third voice, gruff and commanding, shouted back, "Stop talking, and get something done! Debbs! Murphy! Check that alleyway over there!" He paused for a moment to address some other soldiers. "You two! Check to see if they're hiding in that building over there!" And then, to all his soldiers, he yelled, "Don't let them escape!"

Claire froze – the death-filled realm outside this building was going to start consuming it. This place wasn't safe anymore. The anarchy would leave no region of the town untouched.

"Yes, sir!" a chorus of voices answered.

Two sets of heavy footsteps running up the stairs towards the room that she and Envy were in. Their echoes were a countdown – tick, tock, tick, tock – to the entrance of death itself into the room. The beating of her heart pounded in her ears as she stared apprehensively at the frail wooden door that led to the stairs.

Louder and louder; closer and closer. She could hear them coming.

Surely, they had guns, just like that soldier from before.

But this time, there were two of them. This time, they were probably more accurate shots. This time, she had nowhere to run.

"My, my," Envy cooed, his violet eyes gleeful. "Looks like we're going to have visitors."

Claire's amber eyes widened in fear, her face paling as she recognized the sadistic tone of his voice. Her eyes flitted between him and the door, him and the door: on one side of her, there was a psychotic monster, and closing in on the other, there were two people that were sure to try and kill her.

The footsteps stopped. Just faintly, she could hear hurried whispers from behind the door.

Any moment now, they'd slam open the door.

Taking one last look at the door, Claire scrambled behind the homunculus. Here, so close to the window, the screams from outside were sharper, more painful, than from the corner of the room she had been hiding in before, but here, she was also safe. The homunculus wouldn't let them shoot her.

Envy glanced back at her as she hid behind him, but was silent, a ferocious smile reaching across his lips before he turned back towards the doorway, the gun he had transformed earlier still in his grip.

She herself was in no danger of dying, but her hand trembled, a bead of cold sweat trickling down her face.

She could feel it.

Despite the desert sun, it was as if a wintry chill had descended upon the room, as if the Grim Reaper himself was poised with his razor-sharp scythe ready to behead his prey.

Two soldiers, a man and a woman, burst into the room.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's note<strong>: Aaaaaaaaand it's a cliff hanger. Heh. This story is finally starting to get good~ (although I think the previous chapter was far better than this one... for some reason, this chapter worries me. Lol?)

Thanks for all the reviews and feedback on Envy's human name last chapter ;)

**What did you think of the puzzle scene and my portrayal of Envy in it? **It's not the most important scene ever, but I portrayed Envy slightly different than I have so far, so I'd love to hear what you think about it.

As always, hope you enjoyed the chapter~


	12. Liore 7: Immersed in Lunacy

Disclaimer: FMA belongs to Arakawa Hiromu.

* * *

><p><em>Recap: Claire briefly wonders just how much trouble she's gotten into by making a deal with Envy, but she quickly tries to dismiss the thought. She is staying in a building at the edge of town, chosen by Envy, and she finds a puzzle inside a wardrobe there. She puts it together, and Envy comes back from working at the Church. Suddenly, a conflict breaks out outside and two soldiers rush into the room. <em>

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 12 ~ Immersed in Lunacy<strong>

It was one thing to see a dead body. It was another to hear a person die without seeing it.

But it was a whole new thing entirely to see someone die.

People like to live in this idealistic world where bad things don't exist, and no one dies. There are no wars, there are no natural disasters, there are no accidents, and there are no fatal illnesses. They want to believe that things like those – they only happen to other people. They don't want to accept that these things can happen to anyone, and that death happens to everyone.

Even though she still vividly remembered hearing the news of _their _deaths, Claire was no different. Finding out that you would never see a person again was quite different than seeing a person who was talking, moving, breathing –_ living_ – a second before becoming nothing more than a broken rag doll.

Yes, she had seen many dead bodies throughout her life. It was part of her job.

But that was okay, because she didn't know those people and she didn't see their deaths. She could still pretend it wasn't real, like on a detective show.

Yes, she had heard people die before; it was yet another quirk of her occupation.

Every once in awhile, the person she was investigating turned out to be a psychotic killer and she'd hear someone's screams as he killed them.

But that was okay, because she was usually standing on the other side of a door or behind a wall. She hated it, but she could still pretend it wasn't real. In fact, it just didn't seem real.

Because death is something that seems very distant. It is something that only happens inside the pages of a book or behind the screen of a motion picture.

She had never actually seen someone die.

* * *

><p><em>Bang!<em>

The moment the two soldiers had ran into the room, the Grim Reaper cleanly sliced off the first head.

Envy stood there, holding the gun pointed, violet eyes gleaming psychotically. The bullet had pierced the man's neck; it was an instant kill.

Claire cringed and shut her eyes to block the image from her mind, but it was already too late. She had seen it – she had seen the gaping hole in the man's neck, pouring deep red blood down the man's neck and staining his blue uniform; she had seen the wretched expression of pain, forever etched into the man's face; she had seen the man's body crumple to the floor, lifeless. He would never breathe again.

He, who was dead, stayed dead.

Her mouth was dry, her entire body trembled, her hands clasped her head as if that would make everything end.

Death was an eternal sleep.

And now, she heard the choked screams of the female soldier as she wailed hopelessly out, "Lawrence! Lawrence!" She used his first name, as if they had been close. Her gun had long since fallen to the floor.

The homunculus let his gaze turn towards Claire. "Enjoying this?" his snake-like voice asked smoothly, a wide smirk playing across his lips.

To him, this was fun.

This was the reality of death, the reality of joining the military. Her hands were shaking uncontrollably as she futilely tried to cover her ears so she didn't have to hear screams outside, so she didn't have to hear the female soldier's weeping, so she didn't have to hear Envy's wretched, twisted voice.

"Hmm…?" he almost purred. He was entirely relaxed, as if he were asking her about a certain card trick he had shown her. "You're not?"

Claire didn't answer him. She wanted to speak, she wanted to object to his actions, but her mouth refused to be anything but utterly silent. She was paralyzed.

Only the chaos outside played like a soundtrack in the background - the room itself was silent. The female soldier had stopped crying, now simply staring, horrified, at the man's corpse.

Claire's eyes, wide, terrified, never left the ground. She was afraid to look up, to see the scene before her. Maybe if she didn't look at it, didn't see it, it would all just disappear.

_Bang!_ A second shot resounded through the room just as the woman's feet darted for the stairs. Claire flinched, her entire body tensing up. This time, she hadn't seen what had happened, but she knew: the Grim Reaper had swung his scythe a second time.

A morbid thud signified the collapse of the woman's body to the hard floor.

Desperately, Claire wished she could be anywhere but here. Her skin was as pallid as a sheet, her breathing heavy, like she was gasping for breath. Her hands were grasping her head so tightly that it felt as if her nails would soon dig into her skull.

Why did humans have to break so easily?

The homunculus sighed sulkily. "Such a shame…" He shrugged, shaking his head. "I at least thought you'd start screaming at me. That Fullmetal brat certainly would have."

He was sick. He was cruel and vicious. He had no morals, no guilt.

_The dark, yet warm and knowledgeable, eyes of a brown-haired woman. The smiling, yet slightly fatigued, face of a raven-haired, amber-eyed man. _

He was enjoying this.

_Gone, like cherry blossoms in the wind. She would never see them again._

Her hands fell to her sides, but her fists were still clenched. "…You're horrible," the dark-haired girl finally whispered, barely audibly. It wasn't necessary to kill those two soldiers. He could have just knocked them unconscious. For someone as strong as him, it would have been simple. How could he kill so easily?

"How so?" the homunculus asked coolly. His eyes stared down at her mockingly. "I'm not human – so why does it matter if I kill one? It's no different than a cat killing a mouse."

The words hit her like a sharp rock. She gritted her teeth with a mixture of frustration and anger. "…No, you're wrong," Claire protested quietly.

The green-haired boy raised an eyebrow skeptically – both of them knew that she was lying. She was denying what she knew was true because she didn't want to accept it – humans killed nonhuman creatures all the time. He was simply a nonhuman creature killing humans: it was just the reverse situation.

"You're wrong!" she repeated; this time, she shouted and her voice seemed to raise an octave. She didn't want to believe such a twisted truth.

Her words were empty. Meaningless.

Suddenly, the homunculus' cold metallic fingers lifted her chin so that she was forced to look him in the face. Her amber eyes threatened to waver from his insane violet ones, but to waver from them meant to see the bloody corpses lying behind him. "Does that mean…" he murmured, his voice low, sly, dangerous, "…that you think you can oppose me?"

No words formed on her lips. How desperately she wanted to get away from him, but how terribly impossible she knew it was. She couldn't even fight his grasp on her.

"See?" he crooned gleefully, wolfish grin wide across face. "You can't do anything to stop me." He let go of her chin and sneered, "You're powerless."

With that, he turned to leave, strolling calmly out of the room. Without even giving it a second thought, he stepped right into the crimson pool of the soldiers' blood before entering the stairwell, leaving deep red footprints behind him.

As his back disappeared down the stairs, Claire felt her legs go from ice to water, and she fell to the floor. The macabre scene of the two bodies sprawled across the floor was in full view, their blood still leaking from their fresh wounds.

In this place that was probably once a child's room, thick scarlet blood now permanently stained the floor. The happy children's puzzle that she had put together earlier still lay in the corner, but the ever-growing pool of blood was already reaching its scarlet tendrils across its cardboard surface. The scribbled tree, the wobbly circle of a sun, the smiling stick-figure-like children – the blood crawled over them, repainting the image to become a crimson portrait – just like Liore itself.

Her amber eyes drifted back to the gruesome bodies, and the silent tears that had been trickling down her cheeks erupted into sobs as she buried her face in her hands.

The expensive band on the female soldier's ring finger and her heartbroken reaction upon seeing the male soldier's death told the whole story: they had been engaged.

* * *

><p>Since earlier that morning, a sweltering wave of heat had overtaken the city, causing the repulsive stench of corpses to quickly soak the arid desert air. That was the least of it though – the entire town looked as if a sick-minded artist had come through with a bucket of red paint, splashing the paint across every wall possible, and the calls of vultures resounded through the city as the birds circled ominously in the sky and pecked at the flesh of the dead bodies strewn across the ground.<p>

Several times already, Claire had to fight herself the urge to throw up at the nauseating sights. They were everywhere – unavoidable, inescapable. She hadn't been able to bear staying in that terrible building where Envy had killed the soldiers, so as soon as the fighting died down, slipped out of this current building into one of those neighboring.

Even though the distance was short, she had seen the bodies littered across the ground. The civilians' fight had barely reached this far, so there were only the bodies of one or two Lioreans, but there were five or six slaughtered soldiers. Envy had probably killed them after leaving the building – it would be troublesome if they were to come searching for the other two soldiers.

The dark-haired girl stared at the rough ceiling of the new building - it was slightly bumpy and cobwebbed in the corners. She sat with her knees pulled up to her chest on the hard concrete floor below the window. _Is the truth really worth all this…?_ she wondered uncertainly. Sun shone through the room as if the sky was happy, as if it was a good day to play outside.

Normally, she liked sunny days, but today, she couldn't help wishing that it would rain. If it rained, it would be cold and wet and dark, just like it should be. This sort of sunny atmosphere was sickening – it was like listening to someone laugh after hearing that lots of people died. She hated it.

And at the very least, the rain could wash away the dreadful reek of death throughout the town.

Claire tightly clutched the thick notebook she was holding before tenderly opening it. Despite the fact that she hadn't opened this notebook in a long time, the pages fell open easily.

She didn't want to be in Liore anymore. She didn't want to see all this death – by staying here, she felt like she was slowly choking herself.

A little voice in her head asked, _Wouldn't it be easier to just give up? Then you wouldn't have to go through this._

Mindlessly, Claire flipped through several pages of the notebook, letting her hand run over each piece of not-quite-old-but-no-longer-crisp cream-colored parchment as her eyes wandered over the familiar handwriting without reading any of it. She already knew what every page said, practically by heart. This notebook – in a way, it had been the start of everything. If she had never found it, hidden among her parents' belongs, she would never be where she was now. It was what had been the first evidence behind her doubts.

Envy's murder of the soldier played through her head for what seemed the millionth time. _What the hell am I doing..?_ Claire wondered, smiling wryly to herself and burying her face in her arms as she put the notebook aside.

Although her unsettled thoughts continued to swim through her head, she eventually fell asleep.

* * *

><p>Blurred memories –<p>

_Two girls, smiling and laughing as their father tells them stories about faraway lands._

_A beautiful woman with long, sleek chestnut hair, carefully brushing and styling her daughters' hair._

_A newspaper headline that destroyed everything._

"Claire…?" a seemingly far-off voice called out to her.

The cloud of muddled memories dispersed slightly as the voice pulled her back from her dream world into reality.

"Claire?" the voice asked again.

The dark-haired girl groggily registered the voice as one she recognized, but at the moment, she couldn't place whose it was. Her mind was still foggy from sleep… and why was she sleeping on the floor and not in a bed?

Her mind tried to answer the question, but it was still too sleepy, so the answer evaded it.

"Is that you?"

Rubbing her eyes sleepily, Claire gazed up at the speaker. She found herself looking at a tanned, seventeen-year old girl with gray eyes examining her curiously. Claire blinked several times in confusion, recognizing her but unable to figure out why she was there.

And then, her amber eyes strayed to the girl's light brown dress. Instantly, she attempted to jump back, banging her head hard against the wall behind her.

In several places, the dress was stained with blood. It looked as if someone had stabbed the girl a few times.

"R-Roze!" Claire stammered in shock.

The older girl laughed apologetically, not immediately realizing why the younger girl was freaking out to such an extent. "I'm sorry, did I scare you?"

"Y-your clothes!" Claire pointed towards the multiple blood stains. "You're bleeding!"

"Ah, this..?" Roze asked, glancing briefly towards her clothing. "This isn't my blood."

"Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god," Claire stuttered before Roze's words registered. "You're gonna di–" She paused. "Wait." She finally realized what Roze said. Calming down drastically, she asked, "It's not?"

"I was looking around for anyone who was injured so I could give them some treatment," the gray-eyed girl explained. "I got the blood of a few people who I treated on me."

"…Oh." Claire visibly relaxed, letting out the breath she had unintentionally been holding. Now that she had been jolted wide awake by surprise, the image of the soldier's murder flashed through her mind again. Her eyes travelled to the ground for a moment. Now she remembered why she had been sleeping here, but she hadn't realized she had fallen asleep. It was okay though, she supposed… Sleep was, after all, temporary respite. Masking her uncertainty and restlessness, she smiled. "I didn't think I'd see you here!"

"I wasn't expecting to see you either," Roze spoke. Then, somewhat softly, she asked, "Why did you come back..?"

Claire's amber eyes looked at Roze questioningly.

"It's dangerous for you to be here now," the older girl told her. "It would have been safer for you to stay away."

The dark-haired girl knew that Roze was right all too well. Envy had taken no delay to prove that to her. She chose to say nothing, but her expression darkened slightly.

"Unlike the rest of us here," she murmured, frowning, "this isn't really your home. You came here from somewhere else."

_The reason why I came back, eh…?_ Claire thought, sighing. She was silent for a moment as memories of all the danger she had been in recently flashed through her mind. Instead of answering Roze's question, she asked," Hey, Roze… how can you handle it?"

The other girl's frown turned into an expression of slight confusion. "Handle what?"

"…All the death."

Roze blinked for a moment, surprised, before her eyes turned towards the ground. "The death…" Roze began hesitantly. "Saying that it's hard doesn't even begin to cover it… This is the second time that Liore has broken out into civil war, but each death is still awful, horrible." A pained expression crossed her face for a moment before she smiled sadly. "But… do you remember what Ed told me?"

"Ed?" Claire asked, puzzled.

"'Stand up and walk forward… At least you have two strong legs to take you there.'"

The younger girl's eyes widened slightly as she recognized those words that Ed had spoken before leaving Roze behind.

"He was right, you know," Roze continued. "I've seen lots of death here, but if I just sit around and cry about it, nothing will fix itself… If I want something to happen, I have to do something to make it happen. That's why I asked Agatha-san to teach me some first-aid. By moving forward, no matter what happens, even if I can't change everything and stop the whole war, I can at least save some lives that would be lost otherwise."

_Lieutenant Colonel Hughes sat at his desk, learning his head against his hand as if he was stressed about something. "I can't believe I'm saying this to a child like you…" He sighed and pulled out an envelope and some paperwork. "But you're a member of the military now. This here," he said, holding up on the envelope, "is your ID. And this paperwork has deals with the various rules and regulations you will have to keep in mind from now on."_

_The dark-haired girl took the papers from him. "Alright." She smiled. "Thank you."_

"_You're going to have to learn how to use a gun," he told her. Sometimes Hughes could be terribly silly, but right now, as he shifted his position so that he was looking her in the eye, he was serious._

"_I know," she said happily, clutching the papers to her chest like they were her favorite teddy bear. "But you'll find someone to teach me, right?"_

"_Yeah," the lieutenant colonel agreed. "I'd like to send you to Riza Hawkeye since she's one of the best shots we have, but she's at East Headquarters right now…Hmm…" his voice trailed off, and he seemed deep in thought as he stared at his desk for a moment. Then his gaze returned to the girl in front of him and he stated, "Claire."_

_The thirteen-year old girl cocked her head curiously. "Yes?" she asked._

"_The military isn't a place for kids. In the military, people kill, and people are killed. Now that you're part of it, you will be treated as an adult. You will be expected to follow the same rules as everyone else, even though you're much younger. No exceptions."_

"_Yup, I know," the amber-eyed girl said. "But…" For a moment, she shed the appearance of an innocent child that she normally wore as her expression changed to one of determination. "There's something I need to find out. And I'll find it, no matter what."_

_The man sighed. "Alright, then," he said, smiling as he shrugged in resignation. "I give up; you win."_

_The girl grinned, her childish look resurfacing. _

"_Welcome to the military."_

Claire was silent as she thought of the meaning of Roze's words. A little part of her wanted to slap herself in the face and tell her to grow up. _You're a member of the military,_ it reminded her. _You accepted that you would have to see people die when you joined. You can't let something like this stop you. What sort of weak resolve is that? Pathetic._

The dark-haired girl almost smiled at her thoughts. "Thanks, Roze," she said.

"Oh, um," the older girl started, seeming somewhat confused as to what she was getting thanked for, "you're welcome." Then she glanced towards the window. "I really ought to get going now though. Agatha-san might need my help."

"Okay," Claire said. "I guess I'll probably see you some other time then."

"Yes," Roze smiled before turning towards the exit of the building. "Bye!"

Claire waved as Roze ran off to return to her duty of healing people. Roze had changed since she'd last seen her – previously, the girl had been rather weak-minded and reliant on others. Her gray eyes were always scared and wavering. Now, she was stronger, finally able to let go of the past in order to walk forward towards the future.

The dark-haired girl stood up and brushed herself off. It was quiet outside now, so it should be at least somewhat safe for her to go out and return to the original building she and Envy had been staying in.

The least she could do for those two soldiers, after all, was bury them properly…

* * *

><p><strong>Author's note:<strong> Roze doesn't really know if Claire is with the military or not because Claire never told her, nor did she leave together with Ed and Al.

There was one part in this chapter that my sis thought was like a movie trailer o_o

If you haven't already seen it, I posted a link to a picture I drew of Ed, Envy, and Ling on my profile ;)

**What did you think of Claire's meeting with Roze?**

Thanks for reading, reviewing, alerting, favoriting, etc~


	13. Liore 8: Sinking Deeper into Lunacy

Disclaimer: FMA belongs to Arakawa Hiromu.

Note: I may occasionally include scenes from the anime that I haven't changed at all. You may skip over them. They're more of a… "meanwhile, this is happening…" sort of thing.

* * *

><p><em>Recap: Envy kills the two soldiers who enter the room and leaves after antagonizing Claire. Her resolve for joining the military is shaken as she is faced with the reality of death. Wanting to get as far away from the scene of the murder as possible, Claire moves to a different building, where she flips through a notebook. Eventually, she falls asleep, and when she wakes up, she finds Roze right in front of her. Roze reminds her of what Ed told her, and Claire remembers her resolve.<em>

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 13 ~ Sinking Deeper into Lunacy<strong>

**Far away from Liore…**

Two shots rang out through the quiet little town. The middle-aged, heavy-set man's hands shook as he pointed the gun towards the short, blond-haired alchemist.

"H-hey," Ed stuttered in slight shock at the man's reaction as he found himself instinctively holding his hands up to show his peaceful intent. Al, meanwhile, was crouching and holding his head behind his older brother. Sure, Doctor Marcoh was a deserter and was a fugitive, but he hadn't expected such a hostile reaction from him. "We just came to –"

"You said you're a State Alchemist?" the man's frightened voice demanded. "Did you come to bring me back there?" He was almost shouting as he fought to keep his voice steady.

"…Um," Al's hollow-sounding voice echoed from the suit of armor, "You're the Crystal Alchemist, Doctor Marcoh, right?"

"I don't want to go back there!" His hands were sweating; he still held the gun pointed towards Ed and Al. "Please…" he begged, his voice breaking, "don't…"

"That's not it," Ed tried to explain again. "We came to ask you some things…"

"Please," Al said, referring to the gun, "that's dangerous…"

Terror contorted the man's expression. "Did you come to erase me?" he asked shakily. "I won't let you kill me…" he said quietly. "I… I…

The man's gray eyes widened fearfully as the suit of armor stood to his full height. The shadow of the armor overtook him, and his face turned a deathly pale.

"It's okay," Al said comfortingly. "I won't die, even if you try to kill me." He took a step forward, causing the gun to hit the armor.

_Clang…_

The sound reverberated through the empty armor, just as Ed knew it would. At one time, the fifteen-year old had hated that dull echo, the dreadful sound of the sin he committed, the sin from which Al suffered. Overtime though, he had come to accept that sound as one he had to overcome, one he had to fix. Still, Ed felt his eyes shift shamefully towards the ground for a moment.

As Ed returned his gaze to the man, he saw the man had relaxed greatly. Although he was still sweating, he had lowered his gun to the ground and the color had already begun returning to his face. _Is that… _Ed wondered, _recognition in his eyes?_

"You're…" he began. Then he closed his eyes and seemed deep in thought before looking painfully at the suit of armor and saying, "I see, so you're the Fullmetal Alchemist."

…And it had happened again.

Ed pushed his younger brother out of the way and gestured to himself.

"No, I am. Me!"

* * *

><p><strong>Back in Liore…<strong>

_I'm something like a princess locked in a tower right now, _Claire thought as she stared out at the endless blue sky from inside the rugged building. A slight smile slipped over her lips and, leaning on the window sill, she clasped her hands together like a princess waiting for her prince to come. _Oh my gosh, I wonder who will save me? And there's even an evil guard to keep watch over me!_

And then the dark-haired girl sighed, relaxing her arms so that they were hanging out the window slightly. Such thoughts seemed ought of place with the events of the previous day. It was kind of funny how everything had resumed its previous calmness again after the chaos… for her, it was almost as if it had all been just a nightmare. Today was a new day.

And with the new day, she and Envy had also gotten a new building. He had wanted to switch buildings so as to avoid running into any soldiers who came looking for the ones he'd killed. This new building was much emptier than the previous one, and the windows weren't even covered by glass. On the lower floors, there were gashes in some walls suggesting that there had been fighting there at one time, but it hadn't been recent. A thick layer of dust had settled on the staircase, so it was pretty safe to say that the building had been unoccupied until she and Envy had come along. At that moment, she was on the uppermost floor, making good use of the window view. The building rose quite high up.

Somewhat absentmindedly, Claire watched some vultures fly across the sky before her gaze turned towards the ground. There wasn't a lot of wreckage in this part of town, but the people were just as jittery as any other part. Her amber eyes watched a parent hurriedly rush his child from the shadows behind one building to the shadows of another. He was like a rabbit, always on guard, always afraid of being attacked.

She had seen several other people running around this area as well. Although she had barely been able to make out their facial expressions, she could tell that all of them were strained and weary. They were uncertain and scared. They were wide-eyed, constantly looking from side to side to look for the enemy; they were frantic.

There wasn't one person she had seen that looked anywhere remotely close to smiling. These people looked far more miserable than even people standing in a graveyard in fresh gravestone.

…She didn't want to watch them anymore. It was terribly depressing.

The dark-haired girl turned away from the window, choosing to instead lean against the wall next to it. The room she was in had an uneven sandy brown floor and walls of the same texture and color. A no-longer working lamp lay fallen over in the corner, and some blankets that Claire had brought from their previous building had been placed next to it. There was also a box of food for her and an old wooden shelf on which she had placed her bag.

Letting her thoughts wander for awhile, Claire compiled her knowledge of what she knew of the situation in Liore. Although no one had told her what was going on, it was easy to infer that a civil war had broken out after the exposure of Cornello-sama's scandal. The war was between those who had somehow, for some reason that she could not possibly fathom, remained faithful to the priest and those who had lost their faith. From what she'd gathered, the military was there in order to mediate the conflict, but they were, in reality, only making it worse.

_Hmm…_ she thought. _I don't know very much about the nonbelievers. I haven't found very much out about Envy yet, but it doesn't hurt to find out more about the situation here…_

The believers were trying to kill the nonbelievers because Envy was somehow manipulating them into doing so, but the nonbelievers were also trying to kill the believers… although she was sure the nonbelievers' motive partially consisted of revenge, she wondered if they didn't also have a leader pushing them forward and convincing them to murder their opponents.

Claire walked over to the shelf and fished in her bag. She felt her hand brush against Magwar's notebook and the other notebook she was carrying, as well as the small glass jar that held the red stone. Upon touching it, it mildly occurred to her that she had forgotten about it the past few days and she needed to do some research on it, but considering that she didn't have any equipment to do so, the only thing she could currently do was ask Envy about it.

Then, she found her hand clutch the cold metal of her gun, and she pulled it out.

As she stared at it, it was as if she was hypnotized – she was staring at it, yet not staring at it at all. Almost robotically, she slipped a single bullet into its empty chamber and pointed it towards the wall, wondering how it was possible for people to become so blinded by their rage and beliefs.

She lowered the gun. They hadn't seemed so wild, so feral, so beastly when she had been here before.

Quietly, she turned the gun over in her hands. Her amber eyes gazed at the gun with a sort of twisted wonder – when she thought about it, killing someone was as easy as pulling the trigger. That's how easy it was for Envy.

It was just as he said – he was inhumane. He was a homunculus. He was a monster.

But how was the military any different? She was a member of the military, and they had invaded Liore. By fighting fire with fire, they were, just like Envy, intensifying the conflict.

In the end, she couldn't hold a grudge against him for what he was doing, but she still hated it.

All of a sudden, a pallid hand, almost ghostly in nature, reached over her shoulder, carefully lifting the gun from her fingers. Envy had returned from wherever he had gone, probably the church.

* * *

><p>The human girl let out a shrill shriek of surprise (one of those ones that threatened to destroy eardrums) and whirled around to face him. "Oh… my… god…" she said shakily, "Don't suddenly appear like a ghost, dammit!"<p>

Envy chuckled – he hadn't expected such an interesting response. The human was even easier to provoke than he thought. And apparently, she was afraid of ghosts… and in that moment, she was too freaked out by his sudden appearance to be thinking rationally enough to realize that he was much more dangerous than a ghost.

"Hey!" she exclaimed angrily, ears turning a bit pink. "I'm serious!"

"Serious, schmerious," the green-haired homunculus taunted, shrugging. The silly girl was glaring at him as if that would actually do something. Then he looked at her in feigned seriousness. "Girlie, your ears are going to be as pink as that sun-burnt nose of yours soon."

The human girl's ears turned brighter pink and she started ranting about total nonsense that Envy simply did not care about, so he pretended to plug his ears and ignore what she was saying. It was kind of hard though, since he was still holding her gun.

"Do you know how rude it is to – " the girl had been ranting haughtily, but she stopped abruptly and held out her hand as she frowned at him with her amber eyes. "Give me my gun back."

The homunculus took his hands away from his ears and tossed the gun in the air, letting it twirl once before catching it flawlessly. "Naaaah, I don't feel like it," he said in a very droning, bored tone.

"Give it back," she said sternly, one hand on her hip, the other still reached out for him to give the gun to her.

_Damn,_ Envy thought, _she sounds like she's trying to chastise me like an elementary school teacher!_ He had to stop himself from laughing hysterically at that absurdity. He wore a well-practiced straight-face and said simply, "No."

"I said – " she started.

Envy cut her off, still tossing the gun. "But isn't this an awfully dangerous toy for someone who freaks out about killing as much as you do, Girlie?" he asked smoothly. Just barely, there was a spiteful tone in his voice – "You're horrible," she had said to him before when he had killed those foolish soldiers.

_I'm horrible?_ His mind had asked, anger gently starting to simmer in his stomach. _How funny. You're awfully conceited, human, to call me that. You're so freaking innocent. You've never sullied your hands. You haven't yet recognized your own ugliness._

He was facing the gun, but his violet eyes turned sideways to watch her reaction. He despised that innocence of hers. He wanted to crush it in his palm and let the shards fall to the ground.

_Humans are the ugliest, most rotten creatures in the world – simply controlled by their pride, envy, sloth, gluttony, lust, greed, and wrath._

She was quiet now, her expression darkening as she clenched her fists. "…That has nothing to do with this," she eventually said, her amber eyes refusing to look at him.

"Hm, really?" the homunculus asked tauntingly. As he tossed the gun and pulled it out of the air once more, a wicked idea came to mind that turned his fury to glee and a very slight smirk crossed his lips before he nonchalantly tossed the gun back to her. "Well, anyways," he said coolly, "here ya go."

"Wha– " the girl blurted as she fumbled around, trying to catch the gun. Finally, she managed that and she gave him a puzzled look. "Are you up to something?" she asked suspiciously, apparently thinking something was strange about him returning her gun.

"No, not at all," Envy lied, and the girl frowned at him. He decided to change the subject. "So…" he began slowly but deridingly, "what brought you back to Liore, hm?"

"I'm not telling," the girl replied tartly, crossing her arms across her chest.

The homunculus ignored her. "Since you're investigating the Philosopher's Stone," he crooned, "does that mean that you think you'll find something about it here?"

The dark-haired girl took a deep breath and sighed before muttering under her breath, "I hate perceptive creeps like you."

"So I'm right?" Envy said excitedly, as if it were only a wild guess. He chose to overlook her new description of him in favor of messing with her more. "Lucky!"

Amber eyes glared at him determinedly. "You and your companions know something about it."

_My, my, Dante-sama will probably want this girl dead eventually,_ Envy observed. She's _too insightful for her own good._ "Maybe we do," Envy said as he cocked his head to one side, "…and maybe we don't."

"That's not funny."

"Oh well." The homunculus shrugged slightly sulkily. What a kill-joy she could be sometimes. "Not my problem."

She continued to glare at him a little longer, but then the girl exclaimed, "Ah, right!" without warning as she brought her fist to her palm. "If the believers of Letoism are living near the church, where are the nonbelievers living?"

Envy blinked, mildly surprised by the sudden change of subject, but he decided to answer her. "On the west outskirts," he said.

"Alright," she said, smiling. Damn, she was easy to please. "Thanks!" And then she walked past him to the door of the room, opened it, and left.

The violet-eyed homunculus stared at the door for a moment, bewildered by the thanks he'd just received. She seemed to mean it genuinely – no one said, "Thank you," to Envy and actually meant it, unless he was pretending to be someone he wasn't. But as he thought about what the girl had asked, the pieces of the idea he had before began to fall perfectly into place. A wide smirk played across his lips, his eyes laughing insanely.

He couldn't wait to show her – show her that ugliness that resided just as deeply inside herself as it did all other humans.

It was simply a wretched flower waiting to blossom, opening its venom-laden petals.

* * *

><p>People mulled around in the shadows, but few dared to venture into the sunlight. In the shadows, you were hidden. In the sunlight, you were exposed. Their actions were no less skittish than she had seen from the window. A part of Claire wanted to avoid looking at these pitiful people, but she knew she couldn't complete her investigation while running away from something so little.<p>

As she neared the more western edge of town, she'd hear them whispering as she walked past them.

An anxious whisper: "What's going to happen now? Do you think another fight will break out soon?"  
>A fearful whisper: "How many do you think have died already? How many more do you think will die?"<br>A threatened whisper: "Who's that girl? She's not one of _them_, is she?"

Claire allowed her amber eyes to glance over each person, but no more than that. Any more than that, and they may have begun to feel alarmed. She sighed. Although she wanted to strike up a conversation with one of these people to perhaps make her entrance to the nonbelievers' territory more natural (if she came with another nonbeliever, they would be more likely to not notice that she wasn't one of them), it appeared that that wasn't much of an option.

…But even if it wasn't much of an option, that didn't prevent her from trying.

Claire forced herself to glance towards the women huddled in the corners. On this particular day, she'd made sure that she looked a bit ratty: She'd worn her hair messy and unbrushed and her bare feet were already somewhat scratched up from the rough sand. Her hands, face, and slightly torn dress were covered in a light layer of sand. As much as Claire hated to look so unkempt, it was a "natural" look, given the situation in the city.

Seeing one particularly timid-looking woman, the dark-haired girl stumbled towards her, amber-eyes filled with feigned worry. "H-have you seen my sister?" she asked urgently. She bit her lip nervously.

"Y-your sister?" the woman stuttered with a croaking voice. She had flinched at the sound of Claire's voice, her faded brown eyes trembling as she glanced towards the girl standing over her. The woman couldn't have been all that old, but her face was weary and strained as she sat on the sandy ground, making her seem as if she was at least fifty.

"Yes," the dark-haired girl answered. "Umm… umm…" She waved her hands around as if she was flustered. "She's got really straight black hair and gray eyes! She's missing!" She let her eyes turn towards the ground. "…I don't know what happened to her."

Only the context was a lie. The words were the truth.

_The truth is always the best basis for a lie._

The tired woman frowned. "I'm sorry," she said. "I don't think I've seen anyone like that…"

"Oh…" Claire murmured sadly, her expression dark. _Now_, she thought, _if I only can push this lady in the right direction…_ She clasped her hands together desperately and asked the woman, "Do you have any idea where I can find her?"

"Find her?" The woman blinked. Then her gaze averted from Claire's, and her body tensed, her shoulders shaking slightly. The woman was afraid. "D-does she believe in Cornello-sama's teachings?"

Amber eyes registered the woman's new uncertainty. Although Claire was pretty sure that the woman was a nonbeliever (considering the side of town she was on), she was going to have to take a slight gamble now. "How could I possibly believe in him anymore?" she whisper-shouted at the woman, tears in her eyes as she kneeled down and grabbed the woman's shoulders. It was an incredibly cliché line with incredibly cliché acting, but Claire didn't particularly care in this situation. She just needed to look and sound sincere. "How could I believe in him…" she whispered more softly, "…with everything that's happened to my family in the past few days?"

"How…" the woman muttered absently, her dead-looking eyes trailed past Claire and moved towards the vulture-infested sky, "can anyone still believe in him with everything that's happened to their families in the past few days?"

The fifteen-year old girl frowned, honestly at a loss to the woman's question. She answered it truthfully: "I…" she began, "I don't know."

This time, the woman smiled, albeit sadly. "It's nice to see someone who still has some sanity left." She pointed down the alleyway. "If you turn left and keep going straight, you'll eventually find the camp of the nonbelievers."

Claire allowed her face to visibly light up as she smiled wide. Now all she had to do was convince this woman to take her there, and then she would look totally natural entering the camp. "Than—"

She didn't even know what was happening as she found herself lying face flat in the sand. Something – someone, actually – had crashed into her. Somewhat irritably, Claire pushed herself up to a sitting position and found herself facing a girl, perhaps ten years old and missing a few teeth. The little girl's messy mouse-colored braids drooped over her shoulders as she scrambled to pick up the apples and bread that had scattered on the ground. The woman looked fretfully from one girl to the other, unsure of what to do.

Tentatively, the woman reached for one of the girl's apples, probably to help put it back in the basket. The girl's glare was so icy, beast-like, that the woman immediately retracted her hand.

"I'll gather them myself," she said to the woman. It was scary to see a child with a voice of steel, but it simply showed the hostility of the city.

One of the bread loafs had fallen right in front of Claire. While the little girl was looking at the woman, Claire grabbed it and, out of curiosity, threw it at the girl's head.

There were two possible outcomes: a fully feral reaction or perhaps a more childlike, playful one. Claire hoped for the latter.

_It would be good_, she thought, _if this girl is still a child at heart._

The moment the loaf lightly hit the girl's head, Claire received a most biting glare. She ignored it.

"Sheesh, calm down," the dark-haired girl said, frowning. "I'm not a barbarian with an axe, so don't treat me like one."

The little girl continued to glare at her.

"My god," Claire said, getting frustrated. "Do you see a weapon in my hand?" She picked her hands up, to show that they weren't holding anything. "No, you don't! So lay off."

The intensity of the braided girl's glare lessened slightly, and Claire saw her shoulders relax.

"I'm Claire!" she said, holding out her hand and smiling. "Nice to meet you!"

At this, the girl spat at the ground. "I have no reason to tell you my name, you sun burnt bitch," she said nastily. "And by the way, stupid, falsely cheery people like you make me sick."

"Wha – " Claire sputtered, not at all expecting such a wicked response. She felt her blood rushing to her face out of anger. She fought to keep her voice level. "It's not nice to speak to me like that…"

The girl made a clicking sound with her tongue and crinkled her nose. "Ew, you're just like those disgusting adults who keep trying to tell me what to do."

Claire found herself glaring at the girl. "Well, excuse me, but you have a terrible attitude!" she retorted.

At this, the little girl giggled. Claire blinked in surprise.

"Sorry," she said, this time holding out her own hand. "I'm Wendy." Claire shook the girl's hand, still in utter confusion. The girl continued, "It's easier for me to tell if people are threatening if I provoke them first." She grinned, showing her missing teeth.

"Oh," the older girl said. The sudden change in personality was… shocking, to say the least. "I, um, see."

Wendy stood up, having gathered the last of her bread and apples. "I guess I'll be going now." She paused for a moment. "Are you also heading for the camp ahead?"

"Um, yeah," Claire said. Then she finally got her head back together, realizing that this little girl, instead of that woman who was now just nervously watching them, could work as a companion to the nonbelievers' camp. "Can I come with you?" she asked warmly.

"Sure! C'mon!" the girl grabbed Claire's wrist and practically dragged the dark-haired girl to the camp.

* * *

><p>"I've got food!" Wendy waved to the masses of people huddled in the streets. Some were sitting on tattered blankets, others were mulling around with slouched shoulders. Immediately, people started gathering around her.<p>

"Welcome back!" someone called. It was a portly man, with a heavy mustache.

"Who sent a little kid like you to get food?" someone else complained. This one was a thin, tall guy with a low voice.

"Well, she's alright," said the voice of an apron-wearing woman, "so it's okay."

_So this is the nonbelievers' camp,_ Claire observed, looking around. It was on the edge of town, so it wasn't as damaged as some of the more inner parts, but it was still quite dilapidated. It was something like the best of the bad. Despite the inevitable gloom of the town, some people had still tried to make themselves at him. She noticed that several families had taken what few family belongings they still had – a photo, a locket, an heirloom – and placed them in the little space they were now living in. Although they were all poor, they didn't seem to be stealing from one another.

The braided girl grinned toothily. "I sent me," she said proudly.

"But that's so dangerous! You had to steal that from the military rations!"

From these people, Claire didn't feel the hostility she felt elsewhere in town. These people, with their common hatred of Cornello-sama, were "friends." Allies. She found herself relaxing slightly. No one had noticed that she was an outsider, and she didn't think anyone would either – from what she could see, there were plenty of people here and they wouldn't notice one extra person that they didn't recognize.

"Well," Wendy said, "I'm just pro like that." All the adults had surrounded her in a circle, and Claire found herself pushed out of it. She watched them curiously.

"Pro, eh?" A man laughed. "You're one gutsy brat."

"Thanks!" she said. "But I have to report to Lloyd-sama about the food."

Claire frowned from the background. _Lloyd-sama..?_ she wondered. Wendy was now whispering something in the ear of one of the women in the circle. Her face went white.

"A believer!" the woman gasped.

"What did you say?" a man demanded through gritted teeth.

"Wendy, is that true?" a third person asked worriedly.

Suddenly, there was a flurry of voices, and Claire couldn't make out what each one was saying… but she found herself taking a step back as she bit her lip. Although she didn't know what Wendy had said to them, she could feel the vicious eyes of the circle darting between Wendy, the insider, and herself, the outsider.

Eyes that hissed, "You're not one of us…You're a traitor…"

She still didn't have a full grasp on the situation, but no one needed to tell her that she was in danger. Her heart was already pounding in her chest.

"I saw her!" she heard Wendy exclaim, and the whole crowd quieted. "I was watching the Church that day!" The braided girl was waving her arms enthusiastically as if she was telling the tale of a brave warrior. "She was with Cornello-sama when a soldier ran into the building, and she protected him with that 'alchemy!'"

Fear flashed through Claire's amber eyes. How did Wendy know about that? Half of the story was a lie, but there was enough truth in it that the fifteen year-old knew the younger girl had been there.

Claire froze, a shadow looming over her.

Something hard, metal, bashed into the side of her head.

Recognition: Wendy's violet eyes laughed diabolically.

_Yes, the younger girl had been there. As "Cornello-sama" himself._

It was as if someone had taken black paint and splattered it across her vision as she felt her body cripple to the ground.

_Damn you, Envy…_ her fuzzy mind cursed. _What are you scheming?_

She passed out.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's note:<strong> Some fluff and... another cliffie~ ;D

(… Do I sense evil glares?)

Anyways, **do you like my portrayal of Liore?**

Thanks for reading ;) Hope you enjoyed the chapter!


	14. Liore 9: Last Rays of Sanity

Disclaimer: FMA belongs to Arakawa Hiromu.

* * *

><p><em>Recap: Claire is alone in her and Envy's current residence, and she decides that she wants to investigate the nonbelievers a bit to perhaps get a better viewpoint on the situation in Liore. Eventually, thinking of the previous day's events, she finds herself examining her gun and wondering how Envy can kill so easily. Envy walks into the room and takes the gun from her and tantalizes her before returning it. He comes up with some sort of scheme and tells her that the nonbelievers' camp is on the western edge of Liore. Claire goes there, and on the way, she meets a girl named Wendy. Wendy takes her to the camp, but, after telling some lies, she also gets Claire caught as a spy for Cornello. Right before she is knocked out by the nonbelievers, Claire realizes that Wendy was actually Envy.<em>

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><p><strong>Chapter 14 ~ Last Rays of Sanity<strong>

_The homunculus yawned from his perch on one of the rooftops. He had long since shed the form of that ugly priest and returned to his cute form as he watched the end of the fighting. It was starting to quiet down now… Only occasionally would he hear screams. Mostly, he just heard the crackling of fires in the distance. It was like he was watching the resolution of a good motion picture, only it was over now, and he had to wait for a sequel._

_Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a rugged dog sniffing something against a blood-stained wall. Envy cocked an eyebrow curiously, and lightly hopped off the wall. The sand stirred slightly upon his landing, but overall, it was soundless. As he walked over, the dog dashed away from him, leaving him a clear view of what the dog had been sniffing: a corpse._

_Envy leaned over the corpse with his hands on his hips, examining it. It was the body of a little girl with braided hair, who had apparently bled to death. By the looks of her wound, probably a stray bullet. The homunculus shrugged, uninterested, planning to return to his previous perch._

"_Wendy!" the voice of a young man called from somewhere nearby. "Wendy, where are you?"_

Hmm…_ the homunculus thought. _Might this girl be Wendy…?_ The idea made him grin. _

He only had to pull a few strings to make this man become the leader of the nonbelievers.

* * *

><p>Claire woke up with a nasty, throbbing headache. The sort of throbbing headache that felt like an obnoxious little elf was taking a hammer and banging on the inside of your skull. She was tempted to open her eyes but she stopped herself – she didn't remember falling asleep. In this sort of situation… it was better to figure out what was going on before she revealed she was awake. <em>Ugh<em>, she thought, _what happened?_ Bleary images, like rippled reflections in water, appeared in her mind to answer her question.

She had followed a girl named Wendy, who was actually Envy, and then some scary man had banged her in the head with… a shovel? She wasn't sure, but it had been something metal, so it was going to leave her with a nice big bump. Instinctively, she wanted to touch her head in order to assess the damage that had been dealt to it, but she couldn't move her hands.

_Ropes._

Not for the first time, she mentally cursed the homunculus out in such colorful language that it would put a rainbow to shame. He was playing with her, mercilessly. Proving to her once more that he was in total control.

Slightly muffled voices – on the other side of a wall perhaps?

"Lloyd-sama's going to see her, right?"

"Yeah, that's what I was told."

"I suppose we'll just wait for him to come then…" the voice faded away, along with two receding pairs of footsteps – they were leaving.

It was still a bit risky, but Claire decided it was alright to open her eyes since it didn't seem like anyone was around anymore.

Letting her eyes wander over her current surroundings, she quickly deduced that she was still in the nonbelievers' camp. She couldn't say she was entirely sure who "Lloyd-sama" wanted to see, but there was a fairly high chance it was her. Of course, with only that amount of information, they could have just moved her somewhere else and then had Lloyd-sama come to see her… but she could faintly hear what sounded like children playing outside, so she was probably still nearby the encampment.

She found herself calmed slightly by that. It was nice to be a less tense atmosphere, even if she wasn't in the best situation. She'd only seen skittish, fretful people recently – those who looked like they were ready to break down at any moment. It was refreshing to see the children who were relaxed enough to actually be playing.

The room she was in looked like it was on the ground level of some dilapidated building, and for the most part, the room was empty. There were only a few rickety old chairs stacked in a corner, along with some plywood. Her bag had been left to lean against one of those chairs, and they'd tied her to one of the support poles more near the center of the room. As she took a breath, the dark-haired girl had to stop herself from coughing – the room was filled with far more than its fair share of dust. It smelled slightly musty, and she found herself crinkling her nose in disgust when she realized she also smelled rat droppings. _As soon as I get out of here,_ she thought, _I'm definitely taking a shower, if I can find somewhere to take one. Or a bath, if there's no shower. Or… or… something! _

But before she worried about what she was going to do after she escaped, she needed to worry about how she was going to escape in the first place.

She examined the rope she was tied with. Her capturers had wrapped a rope around her torso and the pole, as well as tying her hands.

Well, she could get out of this given a bit of time. Apparently, no one had taught the rope-tier any particularly complicated knots. She frowned. The trick was to make it look like she was still tied up even after she had managed to undo the ropes so that she could wait till the right moment to make her escape.

_Hmm…_ she thought a little more optimistically as a slightly mischievous smile crossed her face. _I can manage that._

Silently, she began fiddling with the ropes that bound her hands.

* * *

><p><strong>Elsewhere in the eastern region of Amestris…<strong>

Thick gray clouds hid the sun's rays as the soft pitter-pattering of rain drops filled the air. Lukewarm rain had already soaked through the shoulders of Ed's red jacket; his soggy hair dripped onto his face. His leather boots were muddy from running on the sodden ground, and his clothes were beginning to stick to his skin. As he, Al, and Marcoh reached a small, fenced clearing between the alleyways they'd been running through, they slowed to a stop.

"Hey, hey!" a child's voice called playfully. There were three boys playing a game that looked like some form of tag. Although they were dressed in rags and their clothes were dirty, they were smiling, laughing.

"Wait up! 'Wait,' I said!" one of the kids shouted. He was apparently the one who was 'it,' and he was chasing the other two boys. While the boys played tag, two little girls were also digging in the dirt, and they'd occasionally point at the boys and giggle.

The middle-aged man's sad gray eyes watched the children, and it seemed almost as if he was remembering something. "This is enough…" he said, closing his eyes in resignation. "We don't have to run anymore…"

Ed looked at Marcoh with confusion.

"I don't care if that man kills me," the man admitted quietly as he returned his troubled gaze to the children. "…He has the right to do it."

_The _right_ to kill him..?_ Ed frowned and asked, "Why?"

Marcoh glanced towards the blond-haired boy for a moment. "That man… he's Ishvallan." His voice was grim, solemn… regretful.

But Ed didn't understand. That didn't make any sense. "Why do you have to be killed just because he's from Ishval?" he demanded.

"The people of Ishval were the ones who started the war for independence, right?" Al asked. "A lot of them died, but the military also suffered a lot of casualties.

The middle-aged man clenched his fist as he looked towards the ground.

"If everyone who lost a war wanted revenge," Ed went on, "there would be endless avenging."

"It wasn't a war…" Marcoh said quietly; the boy and the suit of armor looked at him questioningly.

_It wasn't a war…?_ Ed wondered. There was something foreboding about those words; he felt a twisting feeling in his stomach.

The man's expression was pained as the rain continued to fall from the dull sky. "…It was a massacre."

* * *

><p><strong>Liore<strong>

_Ah!_ Claire thought triumphantly as the ropes around her hands loosened considerably. _I got the knot undone!_

She had been attempting to untie that knot for the past few hours, and her wrists were now slightly raw and her hands aching from being in uncomfortable positions as she worked with the knot.

But she had succeeded, so all that was just fine… and she could hide that she'd untied the rope by tucking the ends of the rope into itself. _Oh yes,_ she congratulated herself mentally, _I deserve a cookie_. Then she frowned irritably. _But my bag's over by those chairs, so I can't get one._

And so, although it annoyed her to no ends, her cookie was going to have to wait. Her stomach growled as she sighed sulkily. She didn't know how long exactly that she'd been unconscious, but she was definitely hungry.

Suddenly, she heard footsteps approaching the door, and she instinctively tensed up. As quickly as possible, she tried to make the rope around her hand look as if it was still tied. It occurred to her that maybe she should close her eyes and pretend to be asleep again, but then she decided against it. They'd probably realize that she was actually awake eventually anyways, and maybe the people who were now approaching included that "Lloyd-sama" that people kept mentioning. She wanted to find out more about that guy.

The wooden door of the room creaked open to reveal a young man followed by an older, middle-aged man. Even though he couldn't be older than twenty-five, the young man appeared to be leading the two, and he seemed like an awfully stress-free guy. He even seemed to be conversing with and laughing at the older man as he walked in. His long black hair was slightly wind-blown, but for the most part, well-kept, and he wore a simple pair of glasses. His clothes were loose and casual: a large t-shirt and a baggy pair of jeans. The older man with him seemed to be more of the serious type. The younger one was rather frail looking, but this older one was well-built. He probably had a stronger mind that most of the other Liorians as well… although he wasn't calm like his companion, he wasn't jittery either. Neither of them seemed to be as rattled by the current events as many of the other adults.

The younger one glanced towards her with his brown eyes. He stopped laughing, but he still seemed to be quite at ease as he smiled. "Hey," he said, addressing Claire, "so you're the one they caught, yeah?"

She eyed him suspiciously, attempting to evaluate him. "Yup, that would be me," she said and smiled back at him as she tried to figure out what he was up to.

"Hmm… and here they told me they caught some important person," he said, frowning as he scratched the back of his head. "I was expecting some sort of big, scary freak."

"Hmph. I'm cute, not scary," the dark-haired girl huffed.

"Yes, sorry, sorry," the young man apologized.

"Lloyd," his companion stated, giving him a look as if to say, "Get on with things. We don't have all day."Claire noted that the older man didn't refer to him with –sama, so the two of them must have been fairly close.

_So this guy is Lloyd-sama, eh?_ Claire wondered. She had expected someone a little different… more like the older man. This guy, though, she couldn't figure out what type of person he was. Everyone seemed to revere him, but she wasn't really getting that kind of feel from him.

"Haha," Lloyd laughed. "I know; I'll hurry up," he said, walking up to Claire and crouching down so that he was eye-level with her.

Before he had a chance to ask anything, the amber-eyed girl decided to clarify something. "You're the leader of the nonbelievers, right?"

"I am, yeah," he said as he rested his arms on his knees. He seemed to be remarkably relaxed and care-free, especially for a leader. "I heard you can use alchemy."

_Damn Envy and his lying._ But she currently didn't know if it was better that he believed she could use it or not. "Ah, you did?" she asked innocently.

"I did, yeah," he answered. "It's kinda funny though…" He frowned. "I thought I knew pretty much everyone in Liore, but I don't recognize you."

Considering she had only spent a few weeks in Liore previously, that really wasn't much of a surprise. "Well, I guess you don't know me," she sulked, turning her head away from him snottily.

"And if you're an alchemist performing 'miracles' for him and I've never seen you before, I suppose that must mean he's hiding you from us by keeping you in the Church most of the time…" He was speaking his thoughts out loud. "In which case, you're important to that priest…" He held his chin in thought. "He probably says that you've been blessed with Leto's powers or something… Hmm…"

The truth was that she really couldn't use alchemy at all so he definitely wouldn't have said that, but Claire wasn't about to tell the man that. She stayed silent.

"But if you know alchemy…" Lloyd continued, "…then you ought to know those really aren't Leto's powers and that Cornello's a fraud…"

Claire narrowed her eyes suspiciously, starting to feel as if this was going very bad for her but not knowing how to stop it. She decided to try anyways. "That little girl called Wendy was the one who told you I could use alchemy, right?"

"Huh?" he blinked. "Oh. Yeah, she was."

"Well, she lied. I can't."

"Is that so…?" Lloyd asked. He thought for a moment. "If you can prove that, I'll let you go."

_It's much easier to prove that you can do something than prove that you can't_, Claire thought irritably. "I can't prove it," she said.

"Sorry," he apologized. "Then I can't believe you. And I trust Wendy."

_Trust Wendy?_ The dark-haired girl winced inwardly. _Both the believers and the nonbelievers – both of them are being manipulated by Envy…_ It was painfully ironic. "…What makes her so trustworthy?" Claire asked carefully.

Lloyd was quiet, as if considering whether or not to answer, but he finally said, "She's my deceased best friend's little sister," and shrugged lightly.

The amber-eyed girl gawked. Her mouth opened to speak, to tell him that wasn't possible because Wendy was actually Envy, but she stopped herself because the idea that one person could transform into another made no sense. Of course, there was the possibility that Envy had only temporarily transformed into Wendy, but then the real Wendy wouldn't know about the events Envy. But then… what had happened to the real Wendy..?

"So yeah, that's how it is," he finished. Then, he looked a bit puzzled for a moment. "Now where was I…" he mumbled to himself. "Ah, right." He went back to his earlier train of thought. "…So if you can use alchemy, that would mean that you're part of the whole scandal," he concluded. His brown eyes looked at her dangerously. "That would be about right, yeah?" he asked.

Well, it would be right if it were true that she knew alchemy, but that wasn't the case. She settled for answering him with a rather irritated, "I don't like you."

He laughed nonchalantly. "I didn't expect you to."

She glared at him. "So what are you planning to do with me?"

Lloyd stood up and said, "Well… I don't really like my idea, but it will have to do." He turned his head and looked at the older man. "Gilbert." His voice was commanding, official. Although he earlier didn't give off the feel of a leader, he now seemed like a natural at giving out orders.

The older man looked at the younger questioningly. "Yes?"

"This girl," the younger gestured towards her, "is going to be our hostage."

…_I don't like the sound of that,_ Claire thought grimly.

"What are we going to use her to bargain for?" the man called Gilbert asked skeptically.

_Somehow,_ Claire thought, _I doubt Envy has any plans of bargaining with them… _

"Rationality."

"What?" the older man asked, thoroughly puzzled. Although he was unaware of it, he had just echoed the same question that had passed through Claire's mind at that moment. "How can you bargain for something like that?"

"Now, now, my dear Gilbert," Lloyd said lightly, shaking his head and putting his hand on the other man's shoulder. "I know you think I'm crazy, but I'm quite certain that you can indeed bargain for rationality, even if it is nonphysical."

Gilbert's brow furrowed. "How?"

Lloyd looked troubled for a moment. "Well, I have to admit…" he began, "…it goes against my morals, but I'm afraid that this is our best option for now." He sighed and then smiled. "Tomorrow, we can approach the believers of Letoism in front of the Church."

"They'll try to attack us."

"No, Cornello will stop them," the younger man explained, running his tanned hand through his messy black hair. "That blond-haired boy from before, the state alchemist, broke his Philosopher's Stone, so he can't perform alchemy anymore. He needs this girl here to use her alchemy to make his miracles for him."

The older man thought the point over and seemed to find nothing wrong with it as he then asked, "So what are we going to do once we approach them?"

Lloyd smiled, seeming to have anticipated this question. "The followers of Letoism firmly believe that Leto is a savior. He can even revive the dead, yeah?"

"Yeah…" Gilbert agreed, still not understanding.

_No…_Claire thought, dread seeping into her. A nervous smile slipped onto her face as she fought the instinct to laugh off that gut feeling she was getting.

"So tomorrow," Lloyd went on, "one of us will stand in front of the church pointing a gun to this girl's head." He paused and added, "A decent distance away, of course, so that no one will shoot in fear of hitting the girl as well."

The older man's face paled slightly.

"Look, I told ya that I don't like the idea either," Lloyd complained. He sounded almost like a teenager who thought the only way to pass a test was to steal the answer sheet. "But like I said, this is our best option." He continued to explain his plan. "So anyways, we'll inform the followers that we're going to kill the girl. Naturally, they'll probably start freaking out, but that's not our problem. Cornello should be able to calm them down."

Gilbert nodded hesitantly but didn't object.

"We'll tell them something like, 'Leto would never let a girl, who believes in him so strongly, like this die, right? And as a god, he should have the power to save her. To let a girl suffer such a brutal death – he wouldn't do that, right?'" Lloyd took a deep breath. It was the first sign he showed of being anything but calm. "We'll wait for the crowd's reaction to those words. Something like that should unnerve them, at least somewhat."

_Oh my god…_ the amber-eyed girl thought fearfully. _You've got to be kidding me._

"…And then we'll shoot."

Gilbert stared at the younger man, open-mouthed and wide-eyed.

A stone dropped in Claire's stomach as her fears were confirmed. Was Envy seriously trying to get her killed? He was the one who had gotten her into this whole mess after all. Had he changed his mind and decided she was just in his way? Her blood pounded in her ears. But why would he go through all this trouble to kill her when he could just snap her neck in half or shoot her?

It didn't matter. All that mattered was that if nothing was done, she was going to die.

"Y-you can't do that!" she sputtered without thinking. If she was important enough to them that they were going to use her as a hostage, then it wouldn't be easy for her to escape. Somehow, she had to stop them from killing her.

The two men had glanced towards her after her sudden outburst. Gilbert quickly recovered from his shock of hearing Lloyd's plan. "…I hate to say this," the older man said, "but she's right. We can't just kill a child like that!"

"Yeah!" Claire agreed. "And anyways, I'm innocent! You can't condemn me without any proof other than Wendy's word! You said you've never even seen me around here, right?" She was just babbling now. "I'm not even from around here! I'm from Centr – "

"I can't believe something like that," Lloyd cut her off sharply. "Do you know how farfetched it is?" He paused as if to let them consider the question. "Surely, people in Central would know what sort of state Liore is in right now. Why in the world would they let a girl like you come here by herself?"

"I– " Claire began, but she trailed off. She couldn't tell him the truth. How could she tell him she was investigating nonhuman creatures – the homunculi – because they may have some connection to the Philosopher's Stone? No one would believe that. And if he found out she was part of the military, he'd probably just use her as a hostage against the military instead of against the believers. "I – " she started again, desperately searching her mind for something to say but coming up with nothing.

The younger man smiled somewhat sadly at her. "I'm sorry, yeah?" he said, his voice barely a whisper. "Just think of this as your fate, as Leto wills it…" His dark eyes frowned at the floor. "If is truly the god that Cornello says he is, then he'll save you."

"Lloyd!" Gilbert objected again. "I still can't agree to this! We really can't kill a child like that. That would make us no better than that priest! It's enough that we adults are killing each other…"

The younger man glanced back at his companion. "…It's not like children haven't already been killed." Lloyd's voice was strained, unsteady. "If she dies…" he continued shakily, "then the beliefs of Cornello's followers will be shaken… and he won't be able to restore them because he'll no longer have an alchemist." He was no longer calm – rather, he was backed into a corner as he clenched his fists and averted his eyes from his companion. No matter what his words were, he was conflicted. He was a leader, and because of that, he had responsibilities, whether he liked them or not.

As much as Claire resented it in that moment, his responsibility was to his people – the nonbelievers. Not her.

Silence settled between him and Gilbert for a few seconds before he turned his gaze to the older man. He asked, "…What is one last sacrifice to prevent the sacrifice of many more?"

"…Dammit," Gilbert cursed in frustration.

"No matter what," Lloyd continued, his tone serious, "we can't let her go back to them." He turned his gaze back to the amber-eyed girl.

"That means that if you try to escape, we'll kill you." It was a statement. A fact. Even if the idea disturbed him, there was no hesitation in his eyes.

She felt herself swallow nervously as she tried to recollect herself. _Calm down, Claire,_ she told herself. _You have to think. Think._ She needed to keep her head and analyze the situation calmly. Basically, she had a death sentence no matter what she did. Somehow – she didn't know how – she'd have to escape without them killing her. Even if it still risked death, that was her best option. It was her only chance.

As Lloyd and Gilbert began talking to one another once more, Claire craned her neck around the pole she was tied to in an attempt to find another exit. She couldn't believe she hadn't thought of that earlier; that blow to the head she had taken must have affected her thinking. But at the moment, she didn't really need to hear the rest of their conversation. Escaping was more important. So far, the only one she could see was the door, but although she wasn't entirely sure, it was fairly probable that there were guards by that door. They did, after all, seem to be treating her like an important hostage.

No windows. Not good.

After Lloyd and Gilbert left, she would have to try and look very carefully to see if there was anyone guarding the door. If there was, she'd have to figure out how to distract the guard.

"So after that, we – "

"Lloyd," Gilbert suddenly interjected, a strange look crossing his face. "Something's happening outside."

No one in the room spoke, all listening for any sounds outside. Claire had noticed some minor racket outside a few minutes earlier, but she had simply assumed some kids were arguing or something. As they listened though, the barely noticeable din outside grew to obvious screams as if crescendoing from pianissimo to fortissimo. Not one of them needed to be told what was happening.

The door burst open. "Lloyd-sama! Gilbert-sama!" the entrant gasped. His dark hair was matted against his sweaty forehead, and his hands were shaking. "The believers! They're here! What do we – "

Lloyd swore loudly. "Why didn't someone tell me sooner?"

"The fighting, it started on the other si – "

"Never mind that!" he shouted, running towards the door. "Gilbert, I need you to –"

"I'm on it."

The three of them dashed out into the chaos outside, leaving Claire behind in the room by herself. She'd been forgotten in the anxiety of the moment, and she hadn't noticed any guards when the door was opened. If there had been any, then they were gone now, and since she'd untied her hands already, getting out of the rest of her bonds would be easy enough. Her escape was now or never…

But… what sort of vicious scene awaited her outside?

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><p><strong>Author's note:<strong> I don't really have a lot to say here, but next update may be delayed a week because I have midterm exams coming up.

**So... what do you think of Lloyd? **

Thanks for reading~ Review please ;)


	15. Liore 10: The Depths of Lunacy

Disclaimer: FMA belongs to Arakawa Hiromu.

Note: So that I don't confuse you, the first thing here... *points to text in the section right below the recap* is a flashforward, if that's what you wanna call it. So the rest of the chapter happens before it and this is technically the end of the chapter. But I want you to read this first because I'm, you know, an evil author. Heh.  
>(Kudos to angelofdeath1119 for giving me this idea xD)<p>

* * *

><p><em>Recap: Claire wakes up, finding herself tied up in some room in the nonbelievers' camp. While she is alone, she starts trying to untie herself, but eventually, two men walk into the room: Lloyd, the leader of the nonbelievers, and Gilbert, his companion. Lloyd talks to Claire a bit, and eventually comes up with a wild plan that ends with her death. Naturally she objects, but to no avail. Fighting starts again outside and Lloyd and Gilbert run out of the room, leaving Claire alone once more.<em>

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 15 ~ The Depths of Lunacy<strong>_  
><em>

_Warm, crimson liquid splattered across her face and onto her clothes. She could feel it sliding down her hands, dripping periodically to the sand where it blossomed into macabre flowers. _

_The man in front of her wobbled for a second, staring at her in shock with his bulging eyes, before he dropped to the ground like a marionette whose strings were sliced in two._

_Her hands fell limply to her sides as amber eyes gazed dully at the scene, denying it all. It couldn't be real. It couldn't._

_He was dead._

* * *

><p><strong>A little while earlier…<strong>

Whoever had tied the bonds around her body, he'd tied them much more firmly than the one who had tied her wrists. The knots were more complex, and even with her hands undone, they were difficult to untie without her being able to see what she was working with. How she wished she had been smart enough to hide a knife somewhere in her clothes.

_They're going to remember that they left me unattended soon, _Claire thought. She needed to hurry, but she was rushing too much. Sometimes, she'd mess up and accidentally tighten a knot instead of loosening it. She found herself biting her lip in frustration. _I can't afford these mistakes. I need to get out of here. Now._

Her skin was sticky with perspiration, but she wasn't sure if it was from her nerves or if it was actually getting really hot. Her breaths had become unsteady gasps though, and from somewhere she could smell the stifling odor smoke. _C'mon! _she thought desperately, as she urgently wished the ropes would fall away from her sides already. There was a fire somewhere. How close was it to here?

She felt the ropes slacken slightly. The fire, she convinced herself, was the least of her concerns. The smoke wasn't particularly thick, so it was safe to say that it was probably a fair distance away. The more prominent danger was there people: What if someone ran into this warehouse-like building that she was in? What would they do to her?

No matter who it was, they'd probably kill her. She wasn't the ally of any of them, so she was everyone's enemy.

But the same would apply outside. How could she possibly get out of here alive?

_Don't think about that now,_ she told herself. _Focus on getting the ropes undone! Focus!_

As her raw fingers pulled out one last knot, the ropes dropped to the floor, but she wouldn't allow herself to celebrate yet. Untying the ropes was only the first obstacle.

Throwing the ropes aside, she dashed towards her bag. Quickly, she checked the contents to make sure they hadn't removed anything from it. Almost immediately, she noticed that all the candy she normally kept in her bag was gone… but that meant that they most certainly had gone through it. Although she had known it was a naïve hope, she'd hoped that they hadn't gotten the chance to dig through it yet, but since she knew they had…

She cursed quietly.

…Naturally, they'd confiscated her gun as well. She had no protection. Zip. Nada.

Running outside now, like this, was akin to a blind rabbit attempting to run through a den of foxes.

Without warning, the door banged open, causing her heart to jump in her chest. The young man called Lloyd stood there, trying to catch his breath for a moment. After quietly closing the door, his brown eyes stared at the untied ropes in front of him, frowning, as he processed what she'd done.

Even though it was the worst possible thing she could do in this situation, she froze, staring fearfully at the man. There was no way – no way in hell – that she was going to get executed the way he planned. She hadn't come to Liore to get herself killed because of someone else's lies. He hadn't looked towards her yet. Even though it was improbable, maybe he hadn't seen her. Could she hide? Wasn't there somewhere? Her amber eyes were scanning the room frantically but were finding nothing.

Lloyd's gaze landed on her. "There you are!" he exclaimed. "Great, you're already out of the bonds." He ran towards her and for a second, she thought she saw him glance quickly at her hands with a slightly puzzled look. Then, one of his hands closed tightly around her wrist.

She flinched, still afraid of him. His words weren't making any sense. He said he was going to have her killed if she tried to escape. Why would he be glad that she was out of the ropes? Her bewilderment only added to her fear, now that she didn't know what was happening.

"We need to get out of here," he said, running back to the door and pulling her with him. She stumbled to keep up with his pace.

"Wha-" she managed to start nervously when they were standing in front of the door. "What are you doing?"

Lloyd paused for a moment. "I need to get you out of here," he said seriously. "…I lied about killing you if you tried to escape." He flung the door open and raced outside with her.

Before she could object, she found herself silenced by the shock of seeing the world outside the room. Blazing tentacles, reaching, grasping for anything in sight, outstretched from some buildings, and the awful stench of black smoke saturated the air. The bloody, disfigured corpse of a woman lay trampled in the middle of the dusty street, and a dirt-covered child wailed next to it. Everywhere there were screams, shrieks, and yells, but they all blended together to sound like a single cry of the city itself.

"Where—" she started again as they ran past a battered brick wall on which she could see two shadows fighting. Lloyd's hold on her wrist was too firm for her to break away, and she was so confused by what was going on that she couldn't figure out if it was better for her to stay or somehow escape. "Where are we –"

"Somewhere safer," the man breathed heavily, just as Claire heard the stomach-churning sound of a knife to flesh. Disgusted, she had to swallow the bile that had risen in her throat, and she felt Lloyd's already white fingers clench even harder around her wrist.

"But I don't understand!" she shouted at him over the rest of the din. Everything was happening too quickly right now; she couldn't focus on any of the grotesque scenes around her. She wouldn't feel the mental effects of this until later… "I thought you needed me dead!"

"I do!" he shouted back angrily. With all the chaos he was going through, his calmness had entirely dissolved, and his contempt for her became obvious. He continued to run, although he was getting slower now as he grew more tired. Then he paused, as if to think about what he was going to say next. "…I just can't let you go back to the Letoists," he growled at her.

"Haven't you noticed that even though we've run past so many of them, none of them have recognized me?" she tried, even though she knew that none of them were actually paying attention to who was running past. If they had been, they'd most certainly be going after Lloyd since he was the nonbeliever's leader. "Don't you think that if I were so important to them, at least one of them would have attacked us by now?"

Lloyd ignored the question. For the first time since she'd started talking to him, he turned his head around to look at her, and his brown eyes stared at her coldly. "If you keep talking," he managed to hiss at her, "I'll kill you for real, yeah? The only reason I haven't killed you yet is because it would be much more effective for me to keep you alive now and kill you later."

That was enough to shut her up.

As he dragged her through the streets, she tried to avert her eyes from all the grotesque scenes around her. She didn't need to be haunted by everything after this horrible nightmare was over. She desperately hoped that the vividness of her memories here would fade quickly… but at least she wasn't as shocked by death as she had been before. This wasn't the "first time" anymore.

They rounded another corner but they found themselves in the face of the main battleground, probably where the fighting had started. Once look at Lloyd's expression told her that they couldn't possibly get through that crowd without getting involved in at least one fight, although she easily could have figured that out on her own. In this small area right here, there was nothing but war, nothing but one man wildly attacking another without even really thinking about what he was doing. Each of these people had been devoured by the rage in his own mind, causing him to act like a savage beast with no mind other than for slaughtering other people.

Suddenly, a voice shouted loudly, "Look! It's the nonbeliever's leader!"

Lloyd's eyes widened, and even though he knew he was in a bad situation, he didn't let go of the girl. For a moment, it looked as if he was simply going to pull off his execution plan right then and there, but then a strange look passed through his eyes, almost as if he recognized the truth of her previous words:

Just as she knew they would, the only one of the two of them that the Letoists recognized was Lloyd.

But her hopes that he realized that were in vain. When he didn't at all release his grip on her, she realized it was more likely that he had simply come to the conclusion that now wasn't the best moment to put his plan into action – not when the believers were all riled up and not thinking straight.

He couldn't bargain for rationality where there was none to begin with.

Allowing himself to be fazed for only that one second, he turned and fled, and as a few of the nonbelievers managed to break themselves away from the fighting mass to chase them, he pulled her along with him. In that moment, these people were an equal threat to both of them, and Claire could feel her adrenaline pumping through her blood as her heart thudded heavily. Both she and Lloyd were getting really fatigued, and neither of them would be able to run from their pursuers for very long. She could see the man's eyes darting around, looking for any way possible to escape.

All of a sudden, the dark-haired girl noticed someone motioning to them from around an alley as he whispered loudly, "Over here!"

Lloyd, upon immediately recognizing Gilbert, ran over to his companion.

"Come with me," Gilbert said hurriedly as soon as Lloyd was close enough. Claire thought she saw him glance towards her with an unreadable expression, but before she could be sure, the younger man nodded, and the older ran deeper through the passageway.

The alley they were being led into was dark, but not so dark that it was hard to see. They had slowed down quite a bit, and Claire was still trying to carefully avoid stepping on any large shards of glass or rocks with her sore feet. Although she mostly kept her eyes on her feet, she would occasionally glance towards the two guys. Her mind was still trying to find an escape, even though, after seeing the brutality of everything first hand, she doubted she could.

But while she knew that it was nearly impossible, she couldn't accept it. She still had to escape.

If only she could find a weapon to at the very least knock Gilbert out. He was the older of the two, but he was far more muscular, and not as tired as Lloyd. If she knocked him out, then she definitely had a chance. Lloyd's grip was beginning to loosen around her wrist, so she might be able to catch him off guard and quickly wrench her hand free. After freeing herself, maybe, just maybe, she could muster up the strength to outrun him. Her eyes scanned the walls and the ground for any piece of debris that she could possible use.

They turned another corner, and all of a sudden, Lloyd swore. "Dammit, Gil, it's a dead end! If the believers find us here, we won't be able to escape. Now where do we go?"

Although Lloyd and Gilbert probably both knew their way around Liore as well as they knew the back of their hands, they hadn't anticipated that the excessive fighting in the city might have caused a wall of rubble to block the pathway in this one area. Perhaps four meters ahead of them, this pile of rubble had fallen in a huge heap, threatening to collapse on anyone who moved even a small item within it. As the two men discussed whether to stay here, to attempt to move the rubble, or to run back out of the alley, Claire tried to inconspicuously reach and remove a loose brick she saw protruding from the wall of the building closest to her. She knew Lloyd would notice her movement if she moved the hand he was holding too much, so she was attempting to stretch out her other hand as far as possible.

"Alright, then," Lloyd was saying, "I guess our best option is to try and run out from here, yeah? These buildings are threatening to collapse any moment, and if anyone finds us here, we wouldn't have any escape routes."

"Yeah," Gilbert agreed. "But you're fatigued now, aren't you?"

"A bit, yeah…" Lloyd admitted. "I've already been running for awhile…"

"I'll take the girl then," he stated, and quickly Claire tried to appear as if she hadn't been doing anything suspicious.

The next few events happened so fast she didn't even have time to process them:

The moment Gilbert's hand curled around her slender wrist, it was as if some strange transformation had happened to him: His cool, calm, collected air had disappeared entirely. His eyes were feral, consumed with an unreadable emotion that simply ravaged his sagacity. As if she was as light as a doll, he hurled her to the ground behind him.

"Oy, Gil, what the hell are you – "

With a movement as swift and smooth as a trained assassin's, the older man thrust a knife into the stomach of the younger.

Immediately, Lloyd doubled over, retching blood through choked screams.

She had landed heavily on her back, but the sand prevented the impact from doing too much damage, let alone to stop her from moving. No – it was her shock that stopped her from moving. As much as her mind screamed at her body to run, her body refused to move, convinced that it was safer for her to stay down, to play dead even if it was obvious that she was still alive. She didn't know what just happened. She didn't understand.

Hadn't Lloyd and Gilbert been companions?

The question flashed in her mind like a glaring neon sign. It didn't make any sense.

The older man, red splotches of blood across his shirt, laughed. He laughed an insane laughter through his strange tears as Lloyd struggled retain consciousness.

"Gilbert…" the younger man managed to gasp. His voice was hoarse, rasping. "You…"

"You want to know why I'm doing this?" the older man asked, swaying unsteadily. He threw his head back, bringing his palm to it while chortling quietly. "You thought I was your friend?" Somehow, his voice was pained.

Lloyd's eyes, slightly unfocused, stared at Gilbert in what must have been betrayal, but also dismay at the state his friend was in.

"Did you know?" he went on, returning his gaze to his friend. "Did you know? The military approached me." His voice was gradually growing higher pitched. "They promised me. They told me that if I killed you, they'd save me and my daughter and wife. My daughter and wife, who still believe in that bastard Cornello even after all of this. They told me that they'd somehow get my daughter and wife, and then help us escape from this hell hole! How could I ever resist such an offer? How could I?"

Lloyd said nothing, though he must have heard. His face was pale from blood loss, and a bead of sweat slipped down his face. The knife protruding from his stomach was steeped in the deep red color.

Thoughts raced through Claire's mind. Gilbert had changed so suddenly – he hadn't seemed like this before. Perhaps it was because of the stress of living here during the civil war; perhaps it was even the offer from the military that had caused him to break. But then another thought came to her mind. "…Envy?" she whispered almost inaudibly.

As she spoke the homunculus' name, the older man's eyes turned to her, and he laughed bitterly. "What was that you just said, little girl?"

"…You're Envy, right?" she tried nervously. "I won't be fooled by that transformation trick of yours again." _He must be Envy,_ she told herself, as she felt herself try to sit up and push herself away from him. _He must be Envy._ It was like a mantra. _He must be. _Perhaps, if he was Envy, then this was just an overly extravagant plot to help her escape.

"What? Envy? Transformation trick? What are you trying to say?" the man asked in bewilderment, frowning at her coldly. "Is that supposed to mean something between you bloody Letoists?"

She wanted to respond to him, but a tiny voice in her head objected that Envy was the one who got her caught in the first place so that didn't make any sense, but she didn't want to believe it. A repressed fear began to cloud her mind.

The older man reached into his belt, unsheathing a second knife in her direction with shuddering hands. "L-Lloyd is going to die," he said shakily. "But… we… no – " he stumbled over his own words. "…The nonbelievers," he eventually decided. "They will fall without him. He's their pillar."

Her eyes panned the area, looking for an escape, but they found none. Behind her was the wall of rubble and in front of her was Gilbert.

"You…" He was talking to her. "You are the pillar for the believers, even though Cornello is their leader. You're the one performing their miracles for them… It's your fault my wife and daughter still believe in him, even after all this. If I take you away from them, they'll no longer have a reason to believe in him…" He was babbling his thoughts out loud through strangled sobs. "This is the only way… the only way I can make up for killing Lloyd."

"W-weren't you the one that said that you guys shouldn't kill me?" Claire found herself asking in disbelief. Her voice was just barely steady. "Y-you can't kill me," she tried nervously. "You can't. It'll lower you to the same level as the priest! You said so yourself!"

"…That doesn't even matter!" he answered with his knife brandished. The blade glinted dangerously as he took a step towards her. "I'm already at his level!" He laughed, covering his eyes with his free hand. "It's pathetic, isn't it? That I've become like this! And here I was, fighting for justice. But who is justice here? Wasn't the military supposed to be justice? Aren't we all just slaughtering each other? Is there any meaning to this at all?"

He was walking closer and closer. Her amber eyes were glued to him in utter horror.

"At least this way, my family will be saved," he continued. Claire couldn't tell if he was talking to her, to Lloyd, or even himself. "This way, we'll live. My wife… my daughter… they won't get themselves killed because they believe that they'll be revived by that cursed Leto…"

He was taking another step towards her. And another. Suddenly, finally convincing her body to move, she scrambled to her feet, looking for anywhere to run to.

"Hey!" Lloyd's voice barely managed. She saw a metallic object flying to the air, and it landed on the ground a few feet from her: her gun.

Her eyes travelled from his pathetic form that was gradually spilling blood onto the ground, to the gun laying in the sand in confusion, but she didn't have time to be confused. Gilbert, noticing what Lloyd had just done, was already bolting towards it.

But she was closer to it. The hot sand slipping under her feet, she dove towards it, and her hands reached it just as Gilbert was within a meter of it. He was right in front of her now.

She could feel her breath quicken, her palms grow sweaty. The older man was standing awkwardly, temporarily frozen. Fear flickered across his face for a moment, but it quickly disappeared, masked by the same fake calmness that was used in attempt to lure a cat out of a tall tree.

She had the gun; he only had a knife. Somehow, the gun was pointed at him. It was shaking terribly, and her eyes were wide with terror, but it was still pointed towards him.

"It's alright," he said. "You won't shoot me, will you?" His words were twisted as he tried to coax her to lower the gun. "You wouldn't do that. It would be too selfish… It would possibly cause me, my wife, and my daughter to die. You wouldn't do that, right?"

The dark-haired girl could feel herself trying to back away from him, but she already had nowhere to go. Her back was pressing against the heap of rubble. Her skin was stark white, and she could practically hear her blood pounding in her ears.

Her eyes wouldn't leave the cold metal of the knife's blade. It looked like it was laughing at her, mocking her. It was coming for her any moment. Cold knife against warm flesh.

"You won't let something like that happen to my wife and daughter, right?"

The words echoed in her ears, but they didn't register.

"…You won't, right?" The older man was crying again. She couldn't tell if they were sincere tears of grief or not. He was just so tortured, so broken, from everything…

She didn't respond to him. Her hands shook uncontrollably as she held the gun, and her mind was blank, like a black void.

"I – " he was stuttered, "I… I don't want my wife and daughter to die believing in that damn priest!" The tears streamed down his dirty cheeks as he slowly raised his knife. "This is the only way I can save them… the only wa – "

"You have to shoot!" Lloyd gasped at the fifteen-year old girl. "If you don't shoot, he'll kill us both!" He was barely conscious. "I didn't return that damn gun to you for nothing, yeah?"

The knife rose higher and higher above her head. Any moment now, he'd swing.

_I'm going to die._

It was like the venomous flower had bloomed inside of her, emitting dangerous pollen.

_No!_ her mind shrieked. _No!_

The knife was coming down towards her.

_I always made excuses. I always told myself that the reason I didn't shoot was that my gun was too loud, even though I could have used a silencer. And then, if my mind reminded me about silencers, I told myself that I was a bad aim._

_I was never a bad aim._

_How could I be? The military never would have let me do anything if I was. It would have been too dangerous._

…

_The real reason I never shot was because I was afraid._

_Afraid of killing another._

A gunshot exploded in the air.

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><p><strong> Author's note: <strong>I love cliffies, don't you? ;D And whoa, there's only one page break thing in this entire chapter.  
>...(I hope no one is mad at me for not going through with the hostage-execution plan. I like this plot better o_o...  /shot)

So anyways, I've been bothering my poor friends about this for quite awhile, but I'm not boring you guys with this arc, right? 'cause I've been getting a few less reviews, and I'm gonna confess now to being practically obsessive with reviews. (...Okay, I lied. Really obsessive. xD)

And because I feel like being random, did you know that in Mulan, there is not only a character called Ling but also a character called Yao?

By the way, I drew another picture of Claire (although those of you who check my dA have probably already seen it since I uploaded it about two weeks ago), and I'd tell you that there's a link on my profile, except that when I checked just now, my profile wasn't displaying any links at all... but that might just be my computer or something, I guess.

Ah, right, if all goes according to plan, there should be a little bit of fluff next chapter~ (omg, like, I'm actually gonna have fluff. Miracle. I swear the genres on this story are a lie and I really ought to change them to something else, but I haven't decided what yet.)

**What do you think of Gilbert? Are the reasons he gives for his actions understandable? **Did you know that I call him Gilly because I don't like the name Gilbert? (You: Erm, what? You named him. Me: ...*awkwardly avoids eye contact guiltily*)

Thanks for reading~ Review please ;D


	16. Liore 11: Receding Tides of Lunacy

Disclaimer: FMA belongs to Arakawa Hiromu

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><p><em>Recap: Just as Claire is about to escape, she runs into Lloyd again, who grabs her and takes her out of the room where she was previously captive. Before that, though, he stares mildly puzzled at the ropes that Claire had undone and the rope burn on her wrists. Lloyd doesn't want her to escape or be freed by the believers, but when they run into a mob of the believers, the believers seem to only notice him. Although Gilbert seems to be helping them by calling them over to an alleyway to escape the mob, he turns on them and stabs Lloyd before turning towards Claire. Lloyd manages to return Claire's gun to her, and in the spur of the moment, she ends up shooting Gilbert.<em>

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><p><strong>Chapter 16 ~ Receding Tides of Lunacy<strong>

Lloyd fought to keep conscious as he blearily watched the scene play out before him. His wound throbbed painfully, and white splotches attacked his vision. In front of him, the dark-haired girl's thin frame trembled as her eyes slowly moved from Gilbert's bleeding corpse to her own hands, covered in his blood. She'd shot him right in the heart. Gilbert. His friend. Lloyd gritted his teeth, suppressing his own anguish. But there was no other choice. Right now, although he couldn't say how much, there was still a chance of him surviving, but if Gilbert had turned back on him, the older man could easily have killed him.

Slowly, he managed to turn his head so his eyes were watching the thick gray clouds. Slowly, a faintly moist breeze blew through the alleyway, just barely rustling his hair, and the clouds began to roll over the blazing sun.

In this twisted world, you never knew when you would have to kill someone.

The thought caused an angry serpent to twist and writhe furiously within him. Between himself and his friend, he knew the answer had to be himself, for the sakes of all the people who were relying on him. It was so frustrating, so terribly frustrating. He hated the way that he had to weigh lives on a scale. Gilbert had only been trying to save his family, but his family was only three people in comparison to all the nonbelievers.

He wondered if the serpent thrashed not only because of frustration, but also because of guilt.

Suddenly, a small yelp from the girl caused Lloyd's head to turn abruptly. An acute pain shot through his body from his still-open wound and he winced.

What he saw made him think that surely, most certainly, he must be hallucinating.

The amber-eyed girl was staring in horror, her breath caught in her chest, as Gilbert's corpse stood up. It was like watching a marionette return to life, the way he moved so fluidly, almost zombielike.

Standing in an almost feminine manner, Gilbert looked down at her smugly with one hand on his hip and the other at his side. It was as if some… some _ghost_ or something had possessed him. The girl's mouth moved wordlessly as a white light enveloped him for a moment, leaving a spikey green-haired teenager in place of the man.

The androgynous teen walked over to the girl arrogantly, so that he was standing right in front of her, before crouching down with a crooked smirk across his lips.

"So…" the violet-eyed being began in a quiet voice that was smooth and slimy, like an eel, "…how does it feel to have bloody hands, hm?"

The girl's eyes lingered on the boy for a moment before returning to her blood-soaked hands. Her breathing was ragged and unsteady.

Leaning his elbow on his knee and propping his head up with his hand, he continued to grin at her slyly. "You thought you could preach to me about being horrible," he murmured, "but look at you. Nothing but a foolish human." His voice was biting, scathing.

The girl didn't react, but her breathing was growing steadier.

"Don't you see, human?" he continued. "You're horrible too. You're willing to kill a man who wants only for the safety of his family to save yourself." He laughed bitterly. "Pathetic, as usual. You, and the rest of those human scums. You're all so easy to manipulate, all so predictable. Why?" He paused for effect. "Because you're all so driven by your own selfishness."

"…And is that why you pretend to be Cornello-sama and turn people against each other?" A small, painful giggle escaped the girl's throat. She looked as if she was on the border of crying, but somehow, she wasn't. "Just for the satisfaction of it all?" Her expression hardened. "You disgust me," she said icily. "You're calling us pathetic? Look at yourself first."

Lloyd's eyes widened. _Pretend to be Cornello-sama?_ Even though his mind was fuzzy, it automatically began to connect the dots. Everything made too much sense for this to be naught but a delusion caused by his blood-loss. That day that they had found out about Cornello's fraud, a mysterious second Cornello had appeared, claiming to be the real one…

Murderous fury sparked in the green-haired teen's violet eyes as his fists clenched tightly. "You dare say that to me, human…?" he hissed venomously. "You dare…?"

The dark-haired girl was laughing again, the sort of unsteady laugh that sounded only partially sane. Lloyd could tell: It wasn't as if there was anything funny; it was just that there wasn't anything else she could figure to do in this situation but laugh. "You know what?" she asked. Her voice was slightly high-pitched, but she looked him straight in the eye. "I do."

His eyes were dangerous slits. "…I'll kill you," he seethed. Lloyd didn't doubt that he meant it, but strangely enough, the girl didn't even flinch.

"Nah, you won't…" she replied coolly but with a touch of madness as she continued to laugh shakily. It was easy to see that she was past the point of breaking down, and the result was this bizarre reaction of defiance. She probably wasn't thinking at all. "…Because it will only prove that I'm right."

"You damn human…" he sneered, his voice just faintly trembling with anger. "You think you can speak to me like that? I'm in control of you and everything that happens to you now… I can even manipulate you to kill people for me." He looked as if he was barely in control of himself as he slowly stood up, his vicious eyes never leaving the blood-soaked girl, but she wasn't even paying attention to him anymore. Instead, she was staring dully at the sky, as a single drop of rain fell, then another, then another.

Without warning, the green-haired teen slammed his foot into the girl's abdomen. There was a sickening thud as her body crashed into the wall behind her, causing her to pass out.

_Plip! Plop! Plip! Plop!_ The few raindrops here and there quickly grew to a steady drizzle.

"…You're nothing but another piece of human trash," he growled at her, even though she was already unconscious. He walked towards her and roughly threw her limp body over his shoulder, and suddenly, the violet-eyed boy stomped over in his direction.

Lloyd watched him, but he was too weak to do any more than that.

"Dear Lloyd-sama," the teen said mockingly as he looked down scornfully on the man, "I can't have you dying yet so I didn't stab your vitals, but you better not bleed to death." He turned to walk off, but then stopped. "Oh, I forgot to mention," he said somewhat absentmindedly. "That girl, Wendy. She's been dead for quite some time already."

"…Did you…" Lloyd managed to breathe agonizingly. He didn't know what to feel, but he knew that the boy wasn't lying this time. Everything hurt. He was fighting the urge to writhe in pain at his wound, but at the same time, he was struck by the fact that Wendy was gone. "…Did you kill her?"

The violet-eyed teen shrugged with a wide grin on his face. "Maybe I did… and maybe I didn't."

A frustrated anger boiled inside of the man at those words. Lloyd tried to force himself to move, to attack him, but it was futile. He was barely conscious. As if he had the strength to attack someone in his current state.

"By the way…" the boy said, eyeing the man's pitiful attempts at movement with a mocking smirk. "I'll know if you tell anyone about me, not that they'd believe you anyways."

After that, he really did leave, and Lloyd was left alone to lie in the rain. The fighting and screaming in the distance was dying down, probably because of the rain. For the first time since Cornello's fraud had been exposed, it was actually raining. Despite the excruciating pain of his wound, a small smile crept onto the man's face as he thought of all of everyone celebrating at the water.

It was funny how something as simple as rain could temporarily stop a vicious slaughter.

His consciousness faded out.

…

He didn't know when, but people had surrounded him. They were all talking, asking what had happened. It felt as if someone had given him some sort of painkiller; his body was numb. He was in a strange daze…

"Don't try to move," the someone was telling him. "You could make the wound worse."

Lloyd tried to make out the face of the person who was speaking to him. A slight frown creased his brow. _Gilbert...?_ he wondered dully. Then, in more alarm, _Gilbert?_

"Where'd the alchemist girl go?" the older man asked him. "Was it her? Her who did this to you?"

At that moment, Lloyd couldn't say how he knew, but this was the real Gilbert. This was the one that had objected to killing that girl back in the room. _At least…_ he thought, _at least the real one's still alive._

Gilbert swore under his breath. "That damn girl escaped. Someone has to go after her!"

The words were blurred in his mind, but somehow he managed to comprehend them. It took him several attempts, but finally he managed, "…No." It was just barely audible. "…Let her go."

The crowd around him began to whisper in confusion, and people were asking him a million questions at once. Again, he felt his consciousness fade.

…

The first sign to him that the girl might perhaps be telling the truth about not being an alchemist were her ropes. There had been no signs of a transmutation being used on them, even though it would have been a lot faster to use a transmutation to get out of them rather than untying them manually, which did nothing but leave her hands raw. That was why he decided not to kill her immediately. His original plan, when he had run back into the room she was held hostage in, really had been to kill her.

The second sign was that the believers really didn't seem to recognize her. They all seemed to recognize him, but they paid no attention to her whatsoever.

The third sign – and proof – was the transforming boy.

He was Cornello.

He had been Wendy.

He had been Gilbert.

Everything fell into place if this… this_ monster_ was behind it all.

He was the puppeteer, and they were the marionettes. For the performance, he had scripted a beautiful tragedy.

Everyone's suffering originated with him.

The girl certainly seemed to know him, but holding her hostage would do nothing for them, that much was easy to see. She was just like everyone else in Liore: his victim.

It was infuriating. If only it really had been only Cornello he was dealing with, perhaps his hostage-execution plan would have worked. But it wasn't Cornello. It wasn't fair. He couldn't even trust anyone anymore; he would never know if they really were who they appeared to be.

How could he possibly win against an immortal monster?

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><p>There was, of course, that blissful moment of ignorance when Claire couldn't remember what had happened. During short moment, she had found herself lying on some hard surface, listening to the loud drone of rain and completely confused as to when she had fallen asleep. Her amber eyes opened to reveal a dark room, lit only by a few candles. She sat up, wincing as she realizing she had a newly-forming bruise on her stomach that she didn't remember receiving. Looking around the room a bit more, she recognized it as one of the rooms in the building she had been staying in with Envy…<p>

Envy.

His name, along with the deep red splatters on her clothing were more than enough to jog her memory.

Horror.

Anger.

Frustration.

Pain.

Anguish.

The rain kept falling in its endless monotony, pounding on the roof with tiny individual drops that combined their impacts together to create an almost roaring sound. But it wasn't loud enough. She wanted it to be louder, so loud that it wouldn't let her think. Several hours had passed since she first regained consciousness, and she had tried so many things just to get her mind off what she'd done – read, play with metal cast puzzles, sleep. None of them had worked, and attempting to sleep (and finding herself completely unable to) was the worst of them because every time she tried to think about something else, her mind would be pulled like one magnet to another back to the kill.

There were several times when she'd seen the homunculus walk past the room she was in. The amber-eyed girl absent-mindedly observed that he really must not like getting wet all that much because he kept swearing as he tried to wring out his dripping green hair whenever he came inside. He just sort of came and went every now and then.

All but one time, he had ignored her completely. That one time, he had simply glanced at her with that wicked smirk of his and sneered, "I know you're enjoying reveling in your own ugliness, Girlie," before walking off again with a cocky wave.

As she lay on her back on the hard floor of the room, she had glared at him, but nothing more.

Eventually, after she was sure Envy had left again, she stood up and walked down the sand-covered, cobweb-laden concrete stairs of the building. In some areas, the rain water seeped through the walls and ceiling, creating small puddles of water on the steps. As her hand slid down the rusty metallic railing, she vaguely wondered how old this building was and what sort of things it was original used for.

She reached the bottom of the stairs, and upon seeing half an inch of water accumulated on the ground floor, chose to slip off her shoes and socks before going outside. The fifteen year old wasn't particularly surprised that the building was slightly flooded, considering that it was at the bottom of a hill. She wasn't really sure why she suddenly felt the need to go outside and get soaked by the deluge, but there wasn't any particularly good reason why she shouldn't do it either. Naturally, she would get really wet, but it wasn't like it was cold or anything.

Her feet sloshed through the cold water between the stairs and the outside, and soon she stepped foot into the pouring rain.

Claire found herself soaked within less than a minute. All she could hear was the rain, and she could barely see in front of her with the way it was bucketing down – everywhere there was just rain, rain, and more rain. Heavy drops acted like glue as they quickly seeped into her clothes, causing them to stick to her pale skin. The rain fell so hard that it almost hurt, but she liked it this way.

Somehow, as she stood there with the water running down her skin and her toes sinking into the sodden sand, it was refreshing. The scarlet stains on her clothes faded as the torrential rain washed away the blood, and if only a little bit, she felt herself relax. She couldn't explain why, but being inside the building was suffocating in comparison to out here. Inside, she felt she needed to wear a mask of strength lest Envy come back and see her looking pathetic, but with all this rain, it was okay to be weak. No one could see her. No one could hear her. No one could notice her crying.

Envy had a nasty way of rubbing everything she wanted to avoid in her face, and for that, she hated him.

Even if she was part of the military… even if it was immature, she had always told herself that there was a way for her, at least, to avoid killing anyone. The thought of killing someone herself was nauseating. She hated the idea that she could kill someone, so she had always told herself that it was something that she simply wasn't capable of.

Deep down though, she knew: That was yet another lie that she concocted for herself.

The truth was that anyone could kill anyone.

It was something she didn't want to believe, even if it was true, but Envy had given her no choice but to believe it. He had taken the thin glass barrier that separated her childish falsehoods from reality and mercilessly shattered it. He wasn't going to let her live in a world at all idealistic; he was going to force her to live in reality.

The girl's amber eyes gazed downwards and a small, sad smile crossed her lips. The rain continued to soak her already saturated hair and her clothes were completely drenched.

There was one thing, though, for which she was grateful: She may have killed someone, but no one had actually died.

* * *

><p>The homunculus had given her the strangest look when the girl had quietly slipped into his room that night. Not that she hadn't expected that. She couldn't really believe what she was doing either, but… she just wanted someone to talk to.<p>

Naturally, she knew that Envy was the cause of her grief in the first place and was a sick-minded sadist. If there was anyone else around, she undoubtedly would have chosen to talk to that person instead, but there wasn't anyone else.

She didn't really want someone to confide in or anything. Like hell she would go to Envy for that.

It was just that she felt that maybe, just maybe, talking to someone could get her mind off things… and if he tried to rub it in again, it wasn't as if he could make it that much worse, anyway. But nothing else she had tried had helped in the least and it didn't really hurt to try.

Besides… it was the truth that Claire needed to learn to work with him, regardless of how much she despised him. The moment she had made the deal with him about finding Hohenheim, it was set: the homunculus would kill her for real if she didn't cooperate.

Finding the corner of the room as far away from the homunculus as possible, the dark-haired girl slid down the wall and pulled her knees up against her chest. She was still quite wary of him, and even if she was talking to him, it wasn't as if she didn't feel any animosity towards him. Envy lay on the one bed in the entire building (which he had, quite predictably, claimed for himself), watching her curiously. The moment she had walked in the room, his violet eyes flickered open, like a cat's.

"…What the hell do you want, Girlie?" he eventually asked when she didn't speak.

Claire glanced towards him. It was funny how she had come in here to talk to him, but she actually didn't know what to say. She asked the first thing that came to mind. "So…" she started, "…homunculi sleep too?"

Envy raised his eyebrows, probably wondering why she was asking that. "We can," he said bluntly. She was surprised he chose to answer. "But we don't need to. It just feels better if we do."

It was weird that he was answering her like this, but she figured it was because he was probably half-asleep. "Mmm…is that so…?" she said thoughtfully. Somehow, from the moment she had heard that he was a homunculus, she had assumed that he didn't sleep, that he was nothing but unfeeling, that his heart didn't beat. She thought of him sort of like… sort of like how you might think of a vampire or a demon. She played with a strand of her long hair as she tried to figure out what to say next.

He saved her the trouble. "You actually managed to get those blood stains out of that white shirt," he said mockingly. "Impressive."

Claire's amber eyes turned downwards as feeling her hands clench slightly. "…Shut up," she snapped harshly.

He whistled. "Oooh, is Girlie getting angry? Does she not want to think about killing someone?" he asked smugly, deciding to actually sit up to look at her. His antagonizing grin was wide across his face as he crossed his legs and leaned his head onto his hand. "I'm _soo_ scared." His words dripped with sarcasm.

"Is there something wrong with not wanting to think about that?" she demanded, frowning at him.

He shrugged obnoxiously. "Doesn't matter to me," he said with disinterest, and then after observing her reaction, sneered, "But isn't it pitiful, the way you humans start whining over every little death? All the sentimentality – Ah, it makes me sick."

She glared at him again, but he continued anyways.

"It's just so fun to watch you humans drive yourselves to your own misery though…" He paused, thinking for a moment. "Hm…I guess it wouldn't be so fun to mess with you without that sentimentality. Oh well."

An uncomfortable silence settled over them, as Claire felt no inclination to reply to him. _He's just trying to provoke me again,_ she thought and buried her face in her arms. Couldn't he talk to her nicely for half a moment? She sighed.

"…I trust that you didn't disturb my wonderful beauty sleep to ask me whether or not I do sleep or not," he said, breaking the silence. She looked up to see his eyes gazing aloofly out one window in the room. Rain was still pattering against the old glass, but not nearly as hard as before. "So why are you here, hm?"

"…No reason," she muttered awkwardly.

He raised an eyebrow, indicating that he didn't believe her in the least.

…She gave up. She might as well just be blunt about it. "Hey," she started again.

"Yeah?"

Claire bit her lip nervously. "…When was the first time you killed someone?" she asked quietly.

At this, the homunculus turned his violet eyes back towards her and chuckled darkly. "A long time ago, Girlie," he told her.

"…I see," she murmured, resting her head in her arms once more. Although it was sort of strange, she wondered what it had been like for him. Sure, he seemed like the type of guy who enjoyed killing now, but had it always been that way? She thought about his reply. How long ago was "a long time ago?" Why did he hate humans so much?

…What was it like to be a homunculus?

* * *

><p>Envy yawned, completely perplexed as to why the human girl had come to talk to him. She was silent now, of course, but what sort of freakish human wanted to visit him in the middle of the night? Hell, that sounded so messed up. And repulsive. He crinkled his nose in disgust. Yuck.<p>

…Okay, if being awake meant thinking like that bastard Greed, then he was going back to sleep. Now. And that human was getting out of his room.

He looked towards her. "Hey," he said, trying to catch her attention.

No reaction.

"Hey, Girlie," he tried again, more irritably this time.

Still no reaction.

He shut up for a moment and listened to her breathing from the other side of the room. It was slow, calm.

…She was asleep.

He frowned with annoyance. He did not like that a human like her felt comfortable enough around him to fall asleep.

Wait, comfortable around him? After what he did? That made as much sense as a fat mouse chilling next to a hungry cat. In other words, none.

And then he had a thought so disturbing that it could even send a shudder down his spine: _She's not a masochist…right?_

* * *

><p><strong>Author's note: <strong>Sorry for the slightly delayed update! I was gonna update on Friday, but then I couldn't log in, and then I was a bit busy on Saturday... xD Next update might be delayed a bit too though 'cause I'm being a bit lazy.

(Alternate title of this chapter: To Troll and be Trolled. I mean seriously, this chapter is one big mass of trollage. And yes I did steal that name from one of my other chapters. Lol~)

By the way, I'm not saying that masochists are disturbing, whether I think they are or aren't. I'm simply saying that Envy, who wants to see humans suffer, would be very confused as to what to do with a human who enjoys suffering.

But yeah, anyways! THERE WAS FLUFF! ...Sort of. There will be more fluff from this point on, and the story will be a bit more light-hearted. (You know, I think that last portion just killed the atmosphere of the chapter, but I like it that way ;3)

And and and... two people drew me fanart! Thanks so much to Silver-Squirrel and KiGaMi xD I love both of your pictures~  
>It would be awesome if you guys'd check it out after profile links are re-enabled ;D (currently disabled links are on my profile lol)<p>

**What did you think of the fluff?**

Thanks for reading/reviewing/alerting/favoriting/etc~ Hope you enjoyed the chapter ;)


	17. Liore 12: Almost Like a Normal Teenager

Disclaimer: FMA belongs to Arakawa Hiromu.

The title of this chapter sounds awkwardly like the name of a Hannah Montana song or something... but whatever. xD

* * *

><p><em>Recap: After Claire shoots Gilbert, it is quickly revealed that she hadn't really shot Gilbert at all, but rather, shot Envy who was pretending to be Gilbert. Envy knocks her out and departs, leaving Lloyd to bleed on the ground. Eventually, some nonbelievers, including the real Gilbert, find Lloyd and start giving him medical treatment, but Lloyd, now knowing the role Envy is playing in Liore, realizes the futility of trying to win against him. When Claire regains consciousness, she finds herself dwelling on what it felt like to kill Gilbert. After trying and failing to get her mind off of it by herself, she ends up attempting to do so by talking to Envy while he is trying to sleep. Ultimately, she falls asleep in the homunculus' room, and Envy is not particularly pleased about that.<em>

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 17 ~ Almost Like a Normal Teenager<strong>

It was strange enough for her to realize that she'd actually manage to fall asleep, but even stranger for her to realize that she'd fallen asleep in Envy's room. But neither of those, believe it or not, was the first thing she woke up to realize.

The first thing she had woken up to realize was that a huge, black, disgusting cockroach moving its tiny little feet, one by one, across her face.

And naturally, she'd shrieked, "OH-MY-GOD-GET-THIS-THING-OFF-OF-ME-OH-MY-GOD-OH-MY-GOD-OH-MY-GOD-IT'S-ON-MY-FACE-GET-IT-OFF-AAAGHHHHHHHHH!" She flailed her hands around frantically, as if that would somehow help while continuing to freak out and scream.

Somewhere through her shrieking, she heard Envy's voice say with disinterest, "Nah, don't feel like it." He was probably picking his ear or something, but she wasn't looking at him. Rather, she was staring, cross-eyed, at the cockroach on her nose.

"JUST-GET-THIS-FREAKING-THING-OFF OF—OH-MY-GOD-IT'S-MOVING-AGAIN-OH-MY-GOD-OH-MY-GOD-OH-MY-GOD!" Her words were sped up and jumbled together as if she was trying to say a tongue-twister and her voice was high-pitched and screechy.

"Hm? Why should I?" the homunculus asked smugly. "Especially when it's so fun to see you flapping your arms like a failed chicken."

She squealed again. "JUST-GET-THIS-FREAKING-THING-OFF!" she repeated loudly.

"Only if you say, pleaaaaaaaaase Envy-sama," he taunted arrogantly.

"NO WAY IN FREAKING HELL AM I SAYING THAT!"

"Then I guess it's staying on you then. Oh look! Soon it's gonna crawl down your neck and then…"

"OH-MY-GOD-EW-THAT'S-SO-DISGUSTING-GET-THIS-THING-OFF-OF-ME-ALREADY!"

"Then all you have to say is 'Pleaaaaaaase, Envy-sama!'" he cooed mockingly.

"NO DAMN WAY!"

"Then I guess that's too – "

"EEK-OH-MY-GOD-EEK-EEK-EEK-EW-IT'S-CRAWLING-DOWN-MY-NECK-YUCK-EW-DISGUSTING-OH-MY-GOD-OH-MY-GOD-OH-MY-FREAKING-GOD!"

"Where's the 'Pleaaaaaaaaaaaaaase, Envy-sama?'"

"OH-MY-GOD-EWWW-PLEASE-ENVY-YOU-JERK-SAMA-I-DON'T-FREAKING-CARE-JUST-GET-THE-GODDAMN-THING-OFF-OF-ME!"

"Cheh," he complained. "That's not a very nice way of saying it."

"WHATEVER-JUST-TAKE-THIS-FREAKING-THING-OFF-OF-ME!"

Envy snickered, holding a hand up to his ear. "What? I can't hear you."

"DAMMIT, ENVY-SAMA, PLEASE GET THIS THING OFF OF ME!"

"My, my…" the homunculus said with pleasure. "I'll think about it."

It took another minute more of Claire's shrieking, kicking, wailing, and screaming before he finally walked over to her with a huge smirk on his face, telling her it was punishment for falling asleep in his room. After he easily removed the cockroach off her neck, he continued to antagonize her for quite some time, but in summary…

… that was her morning.

As she followed Envy to the Church, she was still grumbling to herself about Envy's rotten sense of humor and how he was as immature as an elementary school boy. It was a bit funny, but being woken by him in such a childish way had somehow eased her wariness of him.

The ground was still soggy from the previous day's rain, but it wouldn't be for much longer – not with the sun blazing down so hard. Claire knew that if she stayed in this sun much longer, her already sunburnt skin was going to start looking even worse, even if she was wearing a hat. Honestly, the sun was making her feel lethargic.

The particular region of the town that they were traveling through was unoccupied and yet, fairly undamaged. It looked as if people didn't normally come to this area, as the buildings were falling apart naturally rather than due to being actually attacked. There wasn't a lot of broken glass – instead, there were only crumbling bricks and murky windows. Every once in a while she could even hear the call of a desert bird.

Other than that though, the only things she could hear were her and Envy's footsteps in the soft, damp sand. Neither she nor he was speaking, so she was just left to her own thoughts once more. The previous day's events still incessantly invaded her mind, but she was able to at least somewhat concentrate on other things. It would be awhile, though, before she would stop having nightmares of it… To kill someone – it was haunting, truly so.

But it was something that she couldn't overcome.

In any case, though, she still had other things to worry about… For example, the reason why she had returned to Liore in the first place: to find more information on the Philosopher's Stone.

Although she wasn't sure how she was going to go about doing so yet, she needed to find a time to ask Envy what he knew about the red stone that she'd found at Magwar's mansion. Currently, she had the bottle in a small pouch in her bag, but she wasn't sure how to bring the subject up either. It was almost dangerous to bring up because she couldn't guarantee how he'd react. For all she knew, the fact that she knew he had played a role at Magwar's mansion could infuriate him and cause him to attack her and destroy the stone. His personality was unpredictable and explosive, like a bomb waiting to go off at any time.

The amber-eyed girl looked up from her feet as the homunculus stopped, turning to face her with his hands on his hips and an obnoxiously smug look on his face.

"…Yes?" Claire questioned, wondering what he was up to.

"When we get to the Church," he said, "you get the honors of sitting in the Head Priest's office all day long." He shrugged. "That means no digging around, for Lil' Miss Wannabe Detective."

Claire sighed, flipping her long dark hair over her shoulder. "I didn't expect anything else," she stated simply.

"Oh?" he asked in mock approval. "I guess that means you're beginning to understand then. When you do bad things, bad things happen to you."

His sick sense of humor angered her. Life held no meaning for him. "Shut up," she hissed, glaring at him coldly. "You've already proven that to me."

"Heh," the green-haired teen grinned wide, his violet eyes laughing at her. "I kno – "

Suddenly, the light thumping of feet against the sand caught the attention of both the girl and the homunculus. Claire glanced behind her just as a young boy somehow ran into her, knocking her to the ground. Her bag fell along with her, its contents spilling onto the ground.

"Hey!" she exclaimed, but the boy kept running, without even looking back. The fifteen year-old girl scrambled to her feet, brushing herself off irritably. "How dare he," she muttered.

The homunculus stood on the sideline and whistled. "You gonna let him do that to you, Girlie?" he asked amusedly, gesturing towards her bag.

Quickly, her eyes scanned everything that had fallen to the ground, just before the boy turned a corner.

It was gone. The pouch with the red stone.

"Get back here!" the girl shouted, now chasing after him. "I saw that! Give it back!"

"No way!" the boy yelled in response as he kept running. "Finders keepers, losers weepers!"

_Dammit,_ Claire thought as Envy jogged nonchalantly beside her seeming to find the whole thing like a comedy show. _This isn't funny!_ "That little …" she muttered to herself before shouting again, "Get back here!"

"Both you and that kid," the homunculus said smoothly, "you're both such idiots." Suddenly, he jumped into the air with the ease of an acrobat, landing in front of the boy.

"Who are you calling an idiot?" Claire objected haughtily, as she allowed herself to slow down her pace. "He took something from me, and I need it back!" she said through heavy breaths.

The boy glared at Envy as the homunculus studied him with his violet eyes. "I ain't pathetic!" he argued, taking a step back. He had already recovered from the shock of seeing the green-haired teen jump over his head and land in front of him, and his dark eyes were darting around the area searching for a way for him to somehow escape the bind he found himself in. Claire spotted her white pouch dangling from the boy's scrawny fingers.

The homunculus lifted the boy off the ground by the back of his collar, 'causing him to kick and scream. "And now…" Envy went on calmly, completely ignoring the child, "this little brat is going to tell us some stupid made-up sob story about his equally pathetic old hag to justify his thieving habits." He sighed, as if the boy was completely hopeless. "I'll just have to tell you my reaction before you even start. Boo hoo hoo. How sad. It's so heartbreaking…" He pretended to wipe tears from his eyes before a wolfish smirk spread across his lips and he finished, "_Not_."

"I wasn' gonna do anythin' stupid like that!" the kid was yelling at him throughout the homunculus' entire speech. His mangled speech was probably because of his lack of his two front teeth. "And don't ya dare bring my mama into this!" he continued. "I bet yo mama's so old that if she walked into an antique store, she'd be the oldest thing there anyways!"

Claire's eyes darted worriedly between the two. Envy had temporarily frozen, just staring at the boy, who was still shouting and kicking as he tried to get the green-haired homunculus to let go of him. Envy didn't speak, or even react at all.

Was he just going to take that? What if he decided to attack the boy? She felt her heartbeat speeding up and her face paling. Sure, the boy had stolen something important from her, but that didn't warrant the homunculus murdering him. "Wait, Envy," she tried. "Don't—"

Before she could finish her sentence, Envy had started to roar with laughter.

All the amber-eyed girl could do was stare dumbly as the homunculus doubled over laughing, even dropping the boy. The boy must have been equally stunned because he didn't even try to run away. It had never struck her before this moment, but the homunculus had always seemed so cynical, so hateful.

But somehow, that yo mama! joke had managed to set him off laughing – honestly, genuinely.

Claire couldn't at all understand what was so funny, but… at that moment, the homunculus almost could have been a normal teenager, guffawing idiotically at something stupid his friend had just said.

* * *

><p>It took him awhile, but the homunculus eventually recovered from his laughing attack. Before the thieving boy even realized it, Envy had snatched back the human girl's pouch from him, and he and the human were back on their way to the Church. The whole time they walked though, the girl occasionally glanced at him with a mixture of nervousness and bewilderment in her expression, but Envy ignored her. He assumed her reaction was because of his reaction to the boy, and he felt no need to explain that reaction.<p>

But damn. Although his relationship with her was anything but familial, the next time he saw Dante, he was going to have trouble keeping a straight face.

He had already transformed into Cornello as he took Claire through the double doors of the Church. He smiled genially at the Letoists who very nearly bowed down to him as they swallowed his every word as an absolute command from God. Even his simple greetings were divine and sacred to these gullible humans. He waved at some of them before one of the higher rank clergymen approached him.

"Cornello-sama!" he spoke as he knelt down on one knee and lowered his head in reverence. "I'm glad to see that you're well."

"Raise your head, Alastor," the homunculus said. "It calms me to see that you are still unharmed as well, despite all of the recent violence."

"I'm honored, sir," he said, swelling with pride. Apparently, this human was foolish enough to have his day be made by such a worthless statement. Then, his brown eyes glanced towards the dark-haired girl standing behind the Head Priest. "…Who might she be?" the man asked inquisitively.

"A sad victim…" Cornello-Envy told the man. The human girl was doing well acting her part, as she stared at the floor wordlessly. "She thought to side with the nonbelievers, but she has finally realized the truth. I shall be counseling with her for a good majority of the day, so I'm busy. As such, if you find yourself in need of me, you can find me in my office."

Envy briefly heard the man say, "Yes, Cornello-sama," as he and the human girl continued on towards the stairs leading to his office. Although she kept up the act while they were still in the presence of the believers, the amber-eyed girl frowned at him as they neared the office and Envy pulled out the key to unlock it.

"Hm?" he asked benignly in Cornello's voice, unlocking and opening the doors. "Do you perhaps have some sort of problem with me?"

The girl followed him inside and shut the two wooden doors, closing them behind her, before she answered. "You're even faker than the real Cornello," she said with disgust.

The homunculus transformed back into his cute form. "Why thank you," he sneered obnoxiously, observing the girl glare at him with delight. Then, she haughtily away from him and went to go sit on the window sill. _What?_ Envy thought sulkily. He had been pleased with the first part of her reaction, but this second part was disappointing. _You aren't going to object? That's no fun._

A wicked idea occurred to him as he decided to annoy her further. He pulled out the pouch that he had retrieved from the thieving boy earlier. "Hmm…" he said thoughtfully as he swung it around slightly. "I wonder what's in here…"

Immediately, the girl's head whipped around and upon seeing the pouch, she came right back over to where he was standing. "Give it back!" she told him, holding out her hand for him to give it to her.

_Yes,_ Envy thought, _that's a good reaction_. "Nah, don't wanna," he said with feigned disinterest, as he looked over in another direction while watching her out of the corner of his eye. "I _was_ the one who got this back, after all. So who's to say that it's not mine now?"

"Me," she told him stubbornly. "Now hand it over!" She tried to snatch it from him.

A wide, playful smirk stretched across his face as he held the small pouch just out of her reach. "Nah."

"Give it!" she exclaimed again, with more frustration this time. She was trying to jump up and get it, but Envy kept moving it away so she still couldn't reach it.

The homunculus chuckled lightly. "I wonder what's in here that you want it so badly…" he said, intrigued by the girl's desperation at retrieving the pouch from him. He had grasped it in his hand before he had started waving it around, so he could tell that there was some cylindrical bottle inside of it, but that wasn't going to stop him from messing with her. A look of mischievous glee lit up his face, a look which could be likened to the modern-day trollface. "Could it be…" he started, raising his free hand to make finger quotes, "'feminine products?'"

The look on her face was priceless. Her face flushed and she moved her mouth to speak several times wordlessly. How he wished he had a camera.

But sadly, it only lasted an instant because a moment later, the girl had recomposed herself. "O-of course not," she stuttered slightly. Then she glared at him again. "Get your mind out of the gutter."

"Aww…" Envy said disappointedly, shaking his head. "Such a shame."

"You're disgusting."

"Yuck, you thought I was serious?" He stuck out his tongue to express his distaste while crinkling his nose. "Now _that_ is disgusting."

"Excuse me?" she asked, frowning at him with her hands on her hips.

"I said that the fact that you thought I was serious was what was truly disgusting," he repeated with disinterest as he shrugged. But now he was bored.

"How dare—"

Envy sighed and tossed the pouch back to the girl. She fumbled clumsily with it before managing to grasp it, and she seemed frankly surprised that he had suddenly returned it so easily as she looked at him with her questioning amber eyes.

"I don't feel like playing with that stupid pouch of yours anymore," he answered the unspoken inquiry.

"…Oh," came a terse, still somewhat puzzled reply. Then she paused for a moment, as if thinking, before asking, "…Do you remember a man called Magwar from Xenotime?"

The question was sudden and caught him off guard, so the homunculus had to think for a moment. "Come to think of it," he eventually said, "yes, I do think I remember someone like that. An old, fat loser. What about him?"

"Hmm…" the girl said quietly, "…so you were the one he mentioned in his journal."

"Journal?" Envy hadn't been aware of any such thing.

The human ignored him and went on. "You… I know you're immortal, but you don't age either, do you?"

At this, the homunculus smirked. "You're just figuring that out now, Girlie?" he sneered.

"Hmph," she said, crossing her arms across her chest. "It's not my fault that no one's ever told me anything about homunculi before. For all I knew, before I met you, they were creatures of myth that didn't actually exist."

"Excuses, excuses," Envy taunted, attempting to rile her up again.

But to his disappointment, all he received was a slightly irritated look before she continued, "Well anyways, since you were at Magwar's mansion, then…" She took the pouch he had returned to her, pulled the draw string, and allowed a transparent glass bottle holding a red stone to slide out of it. "…You ought to know what this is."

An expression of surprise flickered across Envy's face, but he quickly replaced it with his typical smugness. "Oh?" he asked mockingly. The color of this particular red stone was so dull, so murky. Although he knew what it was, he could easily mistake it for a silly red mineral.

The dark-haired girl held up the bottle. "Tell me what the relationship between this and the Philosopher's Stone is."

"I feel no obligation to answer your query, Girlie," he scoffed lightly. "And besides…" He gestured towards the red stone in the bottle. "That impure thing is useless."

She frowned. "What do you mean?"

"Exactly what I said," he told her. Then, grinning obnoxiously, he added, "You know, I could just take that from you right now and crush all your hopes of finding anything about the Philosopher's Stone from it."

He had hoped that the girl would get angry with him again, but instead, she only blinked a moment before smiling. "Nope," she said calmly. "If you were gonna do that, you would have done so already."

At that statement, he felt mildly compelled just to prove her wrong, but he shrugged, deciding against it. It would be more interesting, in his opinion, to watch her try desperately to search for answers about it. "My, my," he said nastily, "so confident, aren't you?" He turned and walked towards the Head Priest's desk, deciding that he didn't feel like standing anymore. "I'll let you keep that," he went on coolly, "but in exchange, you have to figure out everything about it yourself."

"That doesn't tell me anything!" the girl complained.

"Too bad, so sad," he said sarcastically as he sat down in the cushioned chair behind the desk.

"Fine," she pouted. "Be that way."

"Yes, I will."

She glared at him once more. "Don't you have something better to do?" she asked. "Isn't Cornello-sama supposed to be preaching or something?"

"Ah, so Girlie's trying to get rid of me now 'cause she can't win against me in a verbal battle, hm?" the homunculus snickered.

"Well?" she asked again, more crossly.

"The dearest Cornello-sama is currently counseling with a pitiful victim of the civil war who has finally realized the truth that the nonbelievers are all heretics," Envy told her. "So no, it's perfectly okay for him to stay in his office all day." He grinned.

"So basically," she said with an accusing tone, "you used me as a reason to skip work."

"Why of course, Girlie. That's exactly it."

One look at her expression at that moment told him that she wanted to strangle him, but instead of trying to do something that was completely futile, she let out a deep breath. "Anyways…" she groaned with frustration, "…if I'm stuck with you for the rest of the day, you can at least answer a few of my questions."

The homunculus raised an eyebrow. "Eh, maybe."

She disregarded his response. "You're not the only homunculus, are you? There ought to be at least two more of you."

The question surprised him mildly, but he decided to answer. "Yeah," he said boredly as he yawned. "Each of us is named after one of the seven sins." He paused, before looking at her more seriously. Now that he thought about it, this was probably something he should go over with her if he wanted to make good use of her. "The two you're thinking of are probably the two you heard talking to me the last time you were in Liore, correct?"

"Yup."

"The woman is Lust and the dumb fat one is Gluttony," he explained. "There are more of us than just us three though."

The girl thought it over for a moment, resting her hand on her chin as her amber eyes stared at the ceiling. "I see…" she said. "And none of you age or die?"

"Duh," he stated bluntly. "I thought that was obvious."

"Hmph," she huffed. "Well then do you guys have a leader?"

Envy's violet eyes narrowed dangerously at this question. The human girl didn't flinch, but he could see a slight fear in her eyes at his reaction. There was no reason for him to tell her a word about Dante; she was sticking her nose in too deep. "Girlie, do you have a death wish?" he hissed icily.

She shook her head.

"Then you should shut up," he snarled, suddenly standing up. This time, he succeeded in making her flinch. He pointed to the tattoo on his left thigh. "See this?"

She nodded slowly.

"The Ouroboros Tattoo is the mark of a homunculus," he told her. "Perhaps I won't kill you, but one of the other homunculi will. So if you see someone else with one…" He made a slicing motion at his neck. "You're dead. Got it?"

The girl was silent, but she nodded again. Her amber eyes told him that she knew he was serious. It was true: the more she knew, the more likely she would get killed.

It was also true, however, that if Dante knew he was conspiring with a human that she would kill her, regardless of how much she knew.

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><p><strong>Author's note: <strong>Oh yes, I do dare to make yo mama! jokes at Dante. Heh. (Dang, I think there was even more trolling in this chapter than in the last one. Although much more lighthearted trolling in this one lol.)

...Writer's block is evil. EVIL. I had so much trouble with this chapter because of it. I spent more than a week attempting to write one paragraph. Agh. So frustrating.

But eventually I did manage to write the whole thing in time, so I suppose all is well ;D

Lorelei Rinoa: Did you get your proper dosage of fluff this time? xD

**I know it's been somewhat difficult to see how I'm going to work this out as a romance story, but are you starting to see a tiny bit of chemistry for this pairing now?**

By the way, would it be weird to mesh the Xerxes plot of FMAB (mostly just the legend about its prowess in alchemy) into my story? Naturally, there are portions of it (the parts about Father (who will not exist at all in my plot) and Hohenheim (who is from that underground city in 2003)) that would have to be changed in order to be worked into the 2003 anime plot.

*Since the login area keeps having technical difficulties, I would like you guys to know that I do accept anonymous reviews*

Thanks for reading/alerting/favoriting/reviewing/etc~ Hope you enjoyed the chapter!


	18. Liore 13: Behind the Hatred

Disclaimer: FMA belongs to Arakawa Hiromu.

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><p><em>Recap: After being rudely awoken by a cockroach, Claire is taken by Envy to the Church for the day. On the way, they meet a thieving boy who pickpockets the pouch Claire is carrying with the red stone from Magwar's house in it, but the homunculus retrieves it for her. He doesn't, however, immediately return it. When he finally does though, the girl gets a chance to ask him about the homunculi, and he eventually tells her to be careful because the other homunculi will kill her if she knows too much.<em>

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><p><strong>Chapter 18 ~ Behind the Hatred<strong>

The green-haired homunculus stared out the window of the building, looking at nothing at all. His eyes wandered over the sand, just slightly blowing in the wind, and the empty buildings nearby, but he was more lost in thought than anything else. Yes, he'd taken the human girl to the Church during the day because they needed to replenish their food stock and he didn't feel like having the girl causing trouble while he was gone. It really was like babysitting.

How the hell had he ended up babysitting a human? He wanted to slap himself for letting himself be degraded so.

But slapping himself was kind of lame too, so… the homunculus simply leaned his arm on the window sill and scowled.

What was really preoccupying him, though, was what the human had said to him shortly before they left the Church…

A few hours ago, the girl had been fiddling with one of her cast metal puzzles in the corner of the room, and neither of them had spoken for a while. Envy only opted to stay in the room because he wasn't in the mood for dealing with the Letoists because, in all honesty, he was bored out of his mind. So he had spent the past few hours annoying the human girl until she finally decided to ignore him.

Luckily for him though, it was late enough that "Cornello-sama" could excuse himself from the Church building and the Letoists wouldn't ask him too many questions.

Just as Envy was about to stand up to leave, the girl spoke. "You know," she said bluntly, "I hate you." Her amber eyes never looked away from the twisted metal structure she was attempting to untangle.

"Aww, that makes me feel all warm and fuzzy," the homunculus replied sarcastically as he shrugged. Like hell he cared whether she hated him or not. She was just another foolish human. A puppet for him to manipulate.

The dark-haired girl did glance at him this time, somewhat irritated. "I don't care how that makes you feel," she replied tartly.

"Yeah, whatever," Envy said, turning towards the door. "Anyways, we're leav – "

"I'm not done yet," the dark-haired girl scolded irritably. "I didn't just randomly tell you that I hate you."

The homunculus rolled his eyes. "Okay, then get to the point."

"Fine," she said. Then, looking him straight in the eye and stating it in such a matter-of-fact way that it barely sounded grateful, she continued, "Thanks for knocking some sense into me." Then, flipping her hair over her shoulder, she walked towards the door.

Envy stood there in shock for a moment, not at all understanding what she was talking about. What she'd said earlier – that she hated him – made much more sense.

No human, no matter how foolish, thanked Envy the homunculus knowing who he really was.

"Aren't you coming?" he suddenly heard her ask. "I thought you were about to say that we were leaving when I cut you off earlier."

"What?" he asked, then still trying to recollect himself, answered awkwardly, "Yeah."

"Well then you better transform back into Cornello-sama before someone sees you," she reminded him, opening the door of the Head Priest's office. "C'mon, let's go."

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><p>Claire had thanked the homunculus for reasons that she didn't even fully understand herself. She actually thought it was a pretty stupid idea and might actually provoke him to torture her more, not to mention that it was a huge blemish on her pride. It wasn't as if he'd forced her to kill him for any other purpose than his own sadism, but still she felt she ought to do that.<p>

Both the incident where he had killed the two military soldiers that had tried to attack them and this incident had forced her to face a reality that she'd always wanted to hide from: Death.

…And honestly, she didn't know if she'd ever have been able to face it without being forced to.

_Hmph, I thanked him, despite his horrible personality, because I am a super cute and polite girl_, she justified in her head. Deciding that made her feel a little better.

It was kind of hard to believe that she had actually managed to spend a whole day with the homunculus though. The amber-eyed girl frowned slightly, wondering how Envy could sometimes act like such a normal teenager and at the same time be a sadistic, scheming mass murderer. She wondered if it was because he was a homunculus.

The sun had already disappeared behind the horizon, leaving only the moon and scattered stars to illuminate the dark night sky. She and Envy had already made it back to the building they were staying at from the Church, and Claire found herself standing against the wall just outside Envy's room, attempting to convince herself to do something she found herself rather averse to doing.

That something happened to be visiting Envy's room again.

_I think I might be crazy,_ she thought to herself with a grim smile, before changing her mind as she recalled what she'd done earlier in the day. _No, I'm definitely crazy._ The thing was though, when the homunculus wasn't being a twisted killer, she could handle him. Even if he was a supreme jerk, she could learn to work with him eventually. It wasn't impossible… and maybe he'd even start being less obnoxious if she got to know him better.

…She thought about that idea for a moment. _Wishful thinking,_ she decided. _Very much so. _

But either way, it was easier to work with him when he was half asleep because he was too lazy to taunt her then. And thus, taking a deep breath, she slipped into his room again.

Unlike the last time she'd entered his room, the green-haired homunculus wasn't sleeping. Instead, he was staring out the dirty window, watching the stillness outside. There was a short moment before he noticed her, during which Claire wondered what he was thinking about. He was always so loud and annoying, but as he looked out at the empty buildings and endless sand, he seemed almost deep in thought. As soon as he heard her footsteps entering the room, though, his violet eyes turned towards her.

"What do you want?" he drawled with a mixture of boredom and minor irritation before she could say anything. It was pretty much the same rude question he had asked the previous time she came into his room.

_Couldn't he possibly ask more nicely?_ she thought to herself, but quickly decided that he couldn't. "…Nothing in particular," the dark-haired girl answered truthfully. Although her opinion was that getting to know him better would make him easier to work with was wishful thinking, it didn't stop her from trying. She couldn't know without trying, she supposed.

"Really now." He raised his eyebrows, unimpressed. "I think…" he started smugly, "you're just too scared to sleep alone at night, Girlie."

"Hmph," she objected stubbornly. Her pride was too much to allow her to tell him he was right, even if it was beneficial for her to do so. After all, if she just let him believe he was right, then he couldn't question her further about her motives. But that wasn't her personality.

"Hmm… so Girlie is also a scaredy cat," the homunculus observed mockingly as a mischievous grin slid across his lips. "Interesting."

In truth, though, it really was safer to sleep near Envy than alone, where some random person could come in and shoot her without warning.

"I am _not_ a scaredy cat," the amber-eyed girl huffed.

"Heh. Whatever you say," he mocked, shrugging.

She glared at him.

Envy chuckled, acknowledging his unspoken victory. "…So why'd you really come here?" he asked, returning his gaze to the window.

"Just to talk," she told him.

"I'm going to have to call BS on that, you know," he replied smoothly, but then he paused as a strange, confused expression passed over his face as his eyebrows furrowed. "…Unless you're a maso – " He stopped and recomposed himself. "Unless you're completely loopy…" He looked at her again, drawing imaginary circles next to his ear to indicate craziness. "There's no way you'd do that."

Claire didn't respond to him, this time too preoccupied by what he had started to say but instead substituted with loopy. She wondered what in the world could possibly make the homunculus suddenly seem so awkward, but she found herself trying not to smile. It was pretty funny to see Envy like that when he was normally so arrogant.

"Hey," he interjected, catching her attention once more. "What the hell was that thank you earlier? Just how stupid can you be?" He laughed cynically and asked, "Did you think you could accomplish something with that?"

"How dare you," the amber-eyed girl retorted, feeling mildly angered that the homunculus couldn't even accept a single thank you without deciding she must be scheming something. "I am _not _stupid, nor was I try to accomplish anything!"

An incomprehensible look passed over the homunculus' face for a moment before his violet eyes examined her carefully with somewhat masked confusion. "Then what could you possibly have to thank me for?" he asked.

Claire blinked for a moment, finding herself a bit taken aback by Envy's question. After the first rude response, she'd expected another one, but perhaps the first rude one was just a product of his disbelief..? She sighed, supposing that, although she didn't really want to, she did owe him an explanation. If her thank you didn't even make sense to her, there wasn't much chance it would make any more sense to him. "Just…" She took a deep breath. "You forced me to face something that I probably would have kept running from until it was too late, but at the same time, you set up a situation where I didn't have to kill an actual human, who really would have died."

"…I see," the green-haired homunculus said after a little while. He still seemed somewhat perplexed, until he recovered himself and smirked. "You're welcome then, Girlie," he sneered. "But I only did that 'cause it would be bad for me if the actual human got out of control and managed to kill you, which really wouldn't be all that hard, considering how miserably weak you are."

This time, it was her turn to shrug, and a heavy silence overtook the room as both parties were consumed by their own thoughts. It wasn't as if she hadn't guessed that the homunculus' reason might be something like that – she seriously doubted that Envy would ever do anything strictly for her – but in the spur of the moment, she had decided to thank him anyways. If not for Envy, who would have forced her to face reality? She may have ended up in a situation where her hesitation and fear of death would end up in the death of someone else. Although she still hated it just as much as before, she did have to admit that death was slightly easier to handle now.

The first time – it was always the hardest.

_I still hate his guts though_, she noted mentally.

The dark-haired girl sighed once more. She seemed to be doing a lot of that recently.

Suddenly Envy spoke, breaking the silence. "…Tomorrow," he started as he observed her with his evil violet eyes, "there's going to be a big battle – plenty of shrieking, plenty of bloody, and plenty of death."

A frown passed over the girl's face. "…Why are you telling me this?" she asked him quietly. The memory of killing another person was still vivid in her mind: the ease of pulling the trigger, the image of a limp corpse, the feel of the warm blood on her skin. Her emotions of that moment that she had temporarily managed to encapsulate flooded through her painfully. She felt her fists clench at her sides.

"Hmm…" he said thoughtfully as a wolfish smirk spread across his face. "You gonna join the party with me?"

Realization dawned on her, and she averted her amber eyes. _He's asking, but he's not actually giving me a choice…_ she thought bitterly. She had seen enough killing, at least for now. Just how much was he planning to make her suffer?

"No? That's too bad," Envy said, feigning disappointment. Then he paused for a moment, and Claire resignedly waited for him to tell her that he didn't care whether she wanted to go or not. Instead, he said, "…But don't go near the Church tomorrow, then."

The dark-haired girl could only stare at him in disbelief as she tried to process what he'd just said. Naturally remembering the cockroach incident that morning, she left his room before she felt too sleepy, but as she lay on the floor in another room, she drifted off to sleep wondering what she should do the next day.

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><p>The homunculus' warning had truly confused the girl because she had fully expected him to force her to watch the fighting. She had been confused enough to debate the authenticity of his statement, and her first thought, of course, was that he must be lying.<p>

But when she thought about it, it didn't make any sense for him to lie. By telling her to avoid the Church, he was telling her that the battle would be taking place there. If he was lying about that, then he was telling her that it wouldn't take place there and that that place was actually safe. Or he might have just told her that in order to mess with her head, and in actuality, the battle was taking place everywhere.

It seemed the most logical to her, though, that he was telling the truth. Indirectly telling her that the Church was actually safe simply wasn't like him, and if the battle were taking place everywhere, he would have quite enjoyed harassing her about what would happen there, rather than leading her to believe that she wouldn't have to watch it. It could be argued, of course, that he wanted to surprise her with that or that he was using reverse psychology.

Claire weighed the likelihood of each possibility, but her conclusion was that her best bet was to follow his advice. Reverse psychology could be turned around backwards and forwards so many times that she found the best option to be to simply disregard it. She also found it highly unlikely that he would have indirectly told her that the Church was safe in comparison to everywhere else, and if the battle was taking place everywhere, then it didn't matter where she was. Therefore, she might as well stay away from the Church.

As such, Claire found a quiet, shaded spot on the edge of town. There were only two single-floor buildings in this particular area and both were rundown and crumbling, but not from recent attack. These buildings had probably been destroyed during the previous civil war in Liore, and both of them looked as if they were about to collapse. Claire decided that she was probably safer outside than inside, and thus chose a shaded spot behind one of the cracked walls to pull out a small paperback book. She would have brought something bigger, but in all honesty, there was no way she could have fit anything else in her bag when she came to Liore. It had been so stuffed that it looked as if every seam was going to burst.

Leaning against the hard wall behind her, Claire resignedly took out her pencil and eraser. When she was staying with the Hughes', Gracia had insisted that Claire not entirely abandon her education because no matter how smart she was, she couldn't know something without learning it, and if she abandoned her education, there were certain subjects she simply wouldn't learn but might need to know at some point. Therefore, much to the teenager's dismay, Gracia had bought a bunch of calculus math books. The woman didn't bother with science and history textbooks, given that Claire often read them anyways out of curiosity, but math was boring to Claire. It was easy enough, but there was nothing at all intriguing about the mystery of what the answer to the problem might be. The mixed potential theory was interesting, the founding of Amestris was interesting, but the natural log of two divided by three was something she did not care about.

And so, as a low roar began to rise from the center of the city and a certain pink-and-brown-haired girl approached, Claire was busy working with derivatives and integrals while wondering why she couldn't be doing the same thing with physics problems instead of normal mathematics ones. She preferred to grumble about something silly like that than think about what was actually happening in the city. It was funny – people were dying and she was sitting her doing calculus problems.

But it wasn't like there was anything she could do about it.

"Claire?" a voice asked, causing the amber-eyed girl to look up from the math problems and see Roze.

"Oh my gosh!" she exclaimed in surprise. She hadn't expected to meet anyone out here, let alone the older girl. "Roze!"

Before Claire had a chance to ask the same question, Roze asked, "…What are you doing all the way out here?"

"Umm…" the dark-haired girl started awkwardly_. Doing math homework doesn't seem like an appropriate answer, considering what is going on in the city right now…_ Claire thought grimly. "I'm just avoiding the chaos…" she told the older girl. "I've seen enough of it already… it's horrible." Quickly, she changed the subject, wanting to avoid thinking about it any longer. "Fancy meeting you here, though," Claire said. Roze seemed to appear in all the strangest locations. "You asked me what I'm doing here, but what about you?"

Roze was quiet for a moment, and the younger girl wondered if she hadn't asked something too personal. But if it was too personal, that made her all the more curious as to what it was… Such a dilemma. The gray-eyed girl saved her the trouble though when she replied, "…Cain and I used to hang out here a lot." She smiled a bit sadly. "…So I come here sometimes."

"This place must have a lot of memories for you then," Claire said. "I thought you would be tending to the injured in the city right now though."

"Yes, and I will. I'm going back there soon, actually," the older girl explained. "The reason I came here today actually wasn't because of Cain…There are some medical supplies that we've hidden out here and Agatha-san asked me to go find them."

Claire nodded, assuming that they hid the medical supplies so that they wouldn't all be lost if they were raided by, for instance, the military. This method of hiding the supplies left them with backup in a bad situation.

"Anyways, though," Roze went on, "have you seen them? Agatha-san told me to look for them here but she didn't tell me where exactly they were."

"Nope," the amber-eyed girl answered. She checked out the area a bit when she first came, but not particularly thoroughly.

"Hmm…" Roze peaked into one of the two barely-standing buildings. To Claire's memory, this one was completely empty except for several layers of dust, so there wouldn't be anything in it. "I really need to find the medicine fast. Agatha-san still has enough, but it would be bad if she ran out…"

"Alright then," Claire said, standing up and brushing herself off as she dumped her pencil, eraser, and math book back into her bag. She smiled at her friend. "The ever-helpful Claire-sama shall come to your assistance!"

The gray-eyed girl laughed lightly. "Sure," she said as she went to go check out the next building, and Claire followed her, until she noticed that her friend was actually going to enter this one. The younger girl was no more eager to enter this building now than she was when she first came to this area, especially considering the state of it. Even with the wind constantly ventilating it through its broken windows, it smelled dreadfully of rat-droppings and mildew. _Ew,_ Claire thought with disgust._ Liore either has a lot of old, uninhabited, and unsanitary buildings or I have an uncanny ability for ending up in gross places._

And so, the "ever-helpful Claire-sama" retired early in her career.

Although nothing could convince the younger girl to actually enter the building, she did at least go through the trouble of looking in through the window so that she would be of some help to her friend. She did, after all, agree to help. Unlike the previous building which had been for the most part empty, this one had an overturned table, some water-stained cabinets, a fallen bookshelf, and some broken chairs. Roze, upon note seeing any medical supplies just conveniently lying around, made a beeline towards the cabinets.

Carefully making sure to avoid any glass fragments remaining in the window frame, the dark-haired girl leaned in to watch Roze search the cabinets. It was somewhat awkward though for her to just be standing there, so she tried to start a conversation. "…So Agatha-san is still teaching you medicine?" she asked.

"Yes," Roze answered, as she bent down and opened some drawers below the cabinet. "She's really amazing, actually. I never knew she had so much expertise in the medical field."

"Ah, really?"

"She told me that her parents had specialized in restoring and preventing the further spread of wounds, skin decay, infections, and other such bodily damage, and they taught her everything they knew when she was young. She doesn't know a lot about illnesses, but the knowledge she has is just what we need in a warring nation like this," the gray-eyed girl explained, closing the drawers and moving on to the next cabinet. As an afterthought, she added, "She also mentioned that there was a man who visited her a bit more recently. He taught her how to make more effective medicines for certain things, in exchange for telling him everything her parents had taught her."

"I see…" Claire said thoughtfully. She hadn't expected that the creepy, apple-selling old woman would know so much about medicine, but she supposed it made sense that she would end up selling apples if Cornello had been using the fake Philosopher's Stone to do all her work for her. "I never really expected that from her."

"Haha," Roze laughed, now digging inside another cabinet. "She's always full of surprises. Not only is she helping me with healing, she's also helping me take care of some orphaned kids."

"My gosh," the younger girl said, surprised. "You two must have your hands full."

"Ye—" Roze started, but then she cut herself off and exclaimed "Oh, found it!" In her hands, she held several rolls of bandages that she was currently dropping into the canvas bag she was carrying, and behind her Claire could see some gauze and various other medical supplies shelves hidden behind a wall of old clothes.

"Congrats," Claire said, as her friend finished putting supplies in her bag, closed the cabinet doors, and came back outside. "I take it you're leaving again now?"

"Yeah," Roze told her apologetically, slinging the bag over her shoulder. "Sorry I can't stay longer, but I'm sure Agatha-san has her hands full already with the children and patients…"

"No, no, it's not a problem at all," the amber-eyed girl told her, although she was worried about her friend. No matter how light-hearted she acted, it was only because she was away from the conflict right now. She could see the smoke rising from the city, she could hear the screams, but she wasn't amidst it. She was only an onlooker. Roze had been alright so far – she could only hope it stayed that way.

Roze looked as if she was about to turn away, but then she stopped and said, "Hopefully all this war will be over soon… There have been rumors of the military's surrender, and I can only hope that they're true."

It took Claire a second or two to process what the older girl had said to her – not because it was hard to understand but just because she thought she must have heard wrong. "Really?" she asked in surprise. If that was so, she wondered if Envy had a hand in it. It didn't seem like such a far off conclusion, considering that Envy had not only been manipulating the believers but also the nonbelievers.

"Yup!" Roze smiled genuinely this time, but Claire found that that made her almost… sad.

The amber-eyed girl wasn't sure how she felt about those rumors, but she decided she shouldn't be surprised that the older girl could believe something was true even only through hope. This wasn't the first time, after all… but if Envy was involved and those rumors did have some truth to them, she couldn't help but think that there was something more to the whole scheme. Even so, though, she smiled back at her friend, saying, "That's wonderful!"

The fakeness of her statement was almost sickening, even to her. It was a terrible thing to lie about to a friend. But it wasn't as if she could tell her about Envy…

"Yeah," Roze said warmly. "Well, anyways, I do need to get going now though."

"Alright," Claire said, waving. Whatever guilt she felt, she masked it entirely. "Bye bye!"

The older girl waved back before running off back towards the war-stricken city, her hometown, leaving Claire to wonder about what Roze had just told her. She knew that the military pulling out wouldn't end the conflict between the believers and nonbelievers, but even just that seemed too good to be true.

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><p>Even by night, the fighting hadn't died down entirely, but Claire eventually returned to the building she and Envy had been staying at anyways. It was getting dark, and deserts areas such as this always had major temperature drops at night. During the day, she had found that she was an awful lot more tolerant of the war than she had been before – perhaps she had grown more used to it?<p>

It was strange how humans could adapt to the most horrible of things.

The dark-haired girl climbed the steps of the building until she was on the highest floor. A chilled breeze blew through the open window, causing her to shiver slightly, but she looked out through it anyways, wanting to see just how bad the damage on the city was this time.

…But she didn't even get quite that far, because at that moment, her eyes were distracted by something else: A foot.

Claire frowned, rubbed her eyes, and looked again.

Yes, there was a (quite dirty) foot hanging down about an arm's length above her head.

And then it all clicked.

Leaning her body over the window frame just far enough so that she could get a good view of slanted roof, Claire called out, "Why are you all the way up on the roof, Envy?" She really couldn't see much more of him than his lower leg and foot though…

"And why the hell are you stalking me all the way up here?" the homunculus replied. He didn't seem particularly surprised or anything; it was more like he just wanted to be obnoxious and not answer her question.

"Excuse me?" she asked, mildly offended. "You're awfully conceited if you think I'd stalk _you_ of all people."

"Oh really now?"

"Yes, really," she said stubbornly. And then, although she couldn't say what compelled her to do it, she added somewhat jokingly, "I hate people with filthy feet. It's nauseating. Like, eww."

"Pfft, it's my feet you have a problem with?" Envy laughed at the ridiculous notion. "Well, whatever then," he said and then shrugged and sneered, "It would be even more nauseating if you _were_ actually stalking me."

"Well, I'm not," she huffed, "so there's no problem." Then she paused, feeling her teeth chattering slightly. "How the heck do you stay up there when it's so cold?"

"Because it's fun," the green-haired homunculus replied smugly. "The view of the fighting is so much better from up here than from anywhere else after all."

She tried not to think too hard about that statement. "You have a sick mind," she told him with disgust.

He either didn't hear her or he chose to ignore her, because he didn't respond to that statement, and Claire decided that she wasn't going to wait for a response that she wasn't sure would ever come, so she pulled her head back in. It really was pretty cold out there now, and she didn't have any extra clothes with her that she could put on.

But perhaps the real reason Envy didn't reply was because he was deciding whether or not to come in, since just a moment later, the homunculus had swung back into the room.

"…I thought you were enjoying the night screams?" the amber-eyed girl asked, eyebrows raised.

"Yeah, and?" he asked sarcastically. "I can't decide to come back in?"

Claire glared at him, not wanting to deal with his constant aggravations at the moment. It wasn't worth the trouble to answer his question, especially when he was going to somehow turn everything around in such a way that she would only end up more annoyed. Eventually, she sighed and asked something on a completely different subject. "…How much longer are you planning to stay in Liore?"

"Unfortunately," the homunculus answered, "not too much longer. Such a shame, really. I'd love to mess with these foolish humans some more." His nonchalance was such that he could have been talking about a party – but that was what he had called it earlier, wasn't it?

The girl frowned slightly at this new piece of information; she was troubled by it. It gave slightly more authenticity to the rumor that Roze had mentioned, but it also gave more authenticity to her own gut feeling that Envy was involved with all of this somehow.

"But once we leave here…" That wolfish grin of his was slowly spreading on to his face. "…You won't be able to slack off on looking for that bastard anymore."

"Hohenheim?" Claire asked, taken off guard by the sudden topic change.

"Who else?" the homunculus growled before continuing smugly, "I've let you off so far because there's not much you can do here in Liore at the moment, but once we get out of here, you'd better start working on finding him…" His tone just lightly hinted at the threat he was proposing. "I didn't let you live for nothing, Girlie."

"…I know," she said quietly, remembering her position. She knew very well that he was in total control of her now, that if he decided to kill her, then that was it. Still, she let her curiosity get the best of her as she asked apprehensively, "…What are you going to do once you find him?"

"What do you think?" he snarled viciously but eagerly. "Kill him, of course. Watching that bastard die…" He cackled psychotically, seeming barely even to contain his excitement. After calming down a bit, he breathed, "I can't wait..."

"Why are you so obsessed with him?" It was obvious enough to her that Envy must know Hohenheim on some sort of level for him to have such strong animosity against him, and she wondered what the man could possibly have done - that was when she remembered: Homunculi were man-made. Her next words were spoken without thinking, out of the pure impulse of her curiosity. "I don't really know all that much about the creation of homunculi, but you'd think Hohenheim created you or something."

To her, this was an impossible suggestion; these words weren't meant to mean anything to him.

But their effect was immediate; it was as if the temperature in the room had suddenly plunged.

Any previous sanity evaporated in an instant - Envy was entirely consumed by his homicidal rage. "You…" he seethed ferociously, walking towards her. All his bloodlust for the man had temporarily been transferred to the dark-haired girl in front of him.

Claire's amber eyes widened fearfully, her face suddenly paling. She could easily deduce it was the last statement she'd made about Hohenheim being Envy's creator that had led to this transformation, but she couldn't understand why. It couldn't possibly be true – although she didn't know Hohenheim's exact age, Envy must be way older than him.

Before she knew what was happening, she was cornered against a wall, his metallic hand around her throat. Her heart was pounding heavily in her chest as she tried desperately, but futilely, to free herself from his grasp. Her lungs thirsted for the air that they were being deprived of.

Just as white splotches began to clot her vision, he hissed murderously, "…If you ever – ever – mention that bastard's name again…" He let his hand loosen, causing her to collapse to the floor, gasping for breath. "I won't care what sort of deal we have. I'll kill you."

All she could do was nod wordlessly, unable to speak as she fought to recover her breath. She heard his words, she responded to them, but they were background noise to her. Her own life had just flashed before her eyes once again simply because of a few misspoken words. She had seen the homunculus' reaction to Hohenheim on her first day in Liore; she had known he hated him.

It wasn't till just now, though, that she recognized the full extent of his hatred.

In that moment as his hand had closed around her neck, insanity had filled his violet eyes, insanity that stemmed from pure loathing. He was the one who controlled, but he was being controlled by his own wrath.

But there was one more emotion she saw:

Pain.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's note:<strong> It's been awhile since I've written a chapter this long lol xD ...I can't believe I wrote a mini fluff scene about feet. And that I started talking calculus. *facepalm*

...(by the way, if there are some inconsistencies in events in this chapter, please do mention something to me. There was one scene I rewrote near the beginning (it was just too awkward... ^^;), and I think I fixed all the inconsistencies, but sometimes I miss things... D; )

Anyways, I'm gonna be real busy the next week, so I might have some trouble finding time to write the next chapter. If I find that I'm behind schedule too much, I'll delay the update (most of the time I manage to update on time though xD).

**Do you think I'm taking the romance at a good pace, keeping in mind Envy's personality?**

Thanks for the favorites/alerts/reviews/etc~ Hope you enjoyed the chapter ;)


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